Henry Holt and Company, LLC Publishers since 1866 175 Fifth Avenue New York, New York 10010 mackids.com Henry Holt® is a registered trademark of Henry Holt and Company, LLC. Copyright © 2014 by Rick Atkinson All rights reserved. For a complete list of image credits, please see p. 197. Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data Atkinson, Rick. D-Day : adapted from The guns at last light / Rick Atkinson. — First edition. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978- 1- 62779- 111- 3 (hardcover) • ISBN 978- 1- 62779- 112- 0 (e-book) 1. World War, 1939– 1945—Campaigns—France—Normandy—Juvenile literature. I. Atkinson, Rick Guns at last light. II. Title. D756.5.N6A75 2014 940.54'21421— dc23 2014005162 Henry Holt books may be purchased for business or promotional use. For information on bulk purchases, please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at (800) 221-7945 x5442 or by e-mail at [email protected]. First Edition—2014 Based on the book The Guns at Last Light by Rick Atkinson, published by Henry Holt and Company, LLC. Designed by April Ward Maps by Gene Thorp Printed in the United States of America by R. R. Donnelley & Sons Company, Harrisonburg, Virginia 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2 207-57516_01_6P.indd iv 3/10/14 10:31 AM contents List of Maps Assault on Normandy, June 1944 . 10 Final OVERLORD Plan, June 6, 1944 . 56 Map Legend . vii Allied Countries and Chain of Command . .viii Axis Countries and Chain of Command . xi World War II Timeline . xii Key Players . xvi A Note to Readers . xix The Plan . xx The Invasion . 50 Epilogue: The Days That Followed . 159 The United States Declaration of War on Germany . 172 The Five Greatest Tanks of the War . 174 The Largest Battleships of the War . 175 The Most Effective Bombers of the War . 176 207-57516_01_6P.indd v 3/10/14 10:31 AM Weapons Carried by U.S., U.K., Canadian, and German Ground Troops . 178 Carrier Pigeons . 179 Operation Fortitude: The Inflatable Army . 180 Caring for the Wounded . 181 Clothing and Equipment Issued to a New GI in 1943 . 182 Monthly Pay for an American GI in 1940 . 182 What They Carried—U.S. Airborne Divisions . 183 What They Carried—U.S. Ground Assault Troops . .184 K Rations: Food on the Go for American Troops . 185 Numbers Tell Part of the Story . 186 operation overlord timeline . 188 Glossary . 190 Places to Visit . .193 For More Information . 195 Bibliography . 196 image credits . .197 Index . 198 207-57516_01_6P.indd vi 3/10/14 10:31 AM a note to readers My father was a soldier, which made me an “Army brat.” He enlisted in the army when he was eighteen years old, in 1943, about halfway through World War II. He became a lieutenant and arrived in Europe just after the war there ended. A few years later, my father came home to America, went to college, got married, and went back into the army, this time to make it a career. Once again he was sent to war-torn Europe. I was born in Germany, but we lived for several years in Austria, which was still occupied by American troops. I guess it’s no wonder that I have always been fascinated by World War II. It was the worst catastrophe in human history—a time of great heroes, of bravery and sacrifi ce, but also a time of great villains, of cowardice and horrible crimes. Seventy years after it was fought, the war continues to infl uence our lives today. Whether or not your great-grandfather or great-grandmother served in the military or worked in a war production factory, chances are it was the most exciting, terrifying, and memorable period of their lives. World War II is also the greatest story of the twentieth century, and my hope is that you will get to know this story because it tells us a lot about who we are as a nation and what events shaped the world you know today. Washington, D.C. 207-57516_01_6P.indd xix 3/10/14 10:33 AM Allied command team behind D-Day (clockwise from top left): Lieutenant Generalal Omar Bradley, Commander, U.S. First Army; Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay, Naval Commandermander in Chief; Air Chief Marshal Sir Trafford Leigh-Mallory, Air Commander in Chief; LieutenantLieutenant General Walter Bedell Smith, SHAEF Chief of Staff; General Sir Bernard Montgomery,y, Commander, 21st Army Group (all Allied land forces); General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Commander; Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Tedder, Deputy Supreme Commander. Februaryry 1, 1944.1944. An Air Scout, a subgroup of the Boy Scouts, draws a picture of a Spitfire fighter plane for a group of other Air Scouts to learn aircraft recognition as they sit on the lawn of the evacuated St. Paul’s School. 207-57516_01_6P.indd xxii 3/10/14 10:33 AM The Gathering May 5, 1944 In this th room, the greatest Anglo-American militarymilita leaders of World War II gathered to rehearse the deathblow intended to destroy Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich. It was the 1,720th day of the war. Admi- rals, generals, field marshals, logisticians, and staff by the score climbed from their limousines and marched into a Gothic building of St. Paul’s School. American military policemen—known as Snowdrops for their white helmets, white pistol belts, white leg- gings, and white gloves—looked closely at the 146 engraved invitations and security passes distrib- uted a month earlier. Then six uniformed ushers escorted the guests, later described as “big men with the air of fame about them,” into the Model Room, a cold auditorium with black columns and hard, nar- row benches reputedly designed to keep young THE GATHERING 1 207-57516_01_6P.indd 1 3/10/14 10:33 AM schoolboys awake. The students of St. Paul’s School had long been evacuated to rural England—German bombs had shat- tered seven hundred windows across the school’s campus. Top-secret charts and maps now lined the Model Room. Since January, the school had served as headquarters for the British 21st Army Group, and here the detailed planning for Operation OVERLORD, the Allied invasion of France, had gelled. As the senior officers found their benches in rows B through J, some spread blankets across their laps or cinched their over- coats against the chill. Row A, fourteen armchairs arranged elbow to elbow, was reserved for the highest of the mighty, and now these men began to take their seats. The prime minister of England, Winston Churchill, dressed in a black coat and Air Chief Marshal Sir Sholto Douglass (left) standing with his senior air staff offi cer in the operations room on the morning of the invasion. 2 THE PLAN 207-57516_01_6P.indd 2 3/10/14 10:33 AM holding his usual Havana cigar, entered with U.S. General Dwight D. Eisenhower, whose title, Supreme Commander of the Allied Expedi- tionary Force, signaled his leader- ship over all of the Allied forces in Europe. Neither cheers nor applause greeted them, but the assembly stood as one when King George VI His Imperial Majesty King George VI strolled down the aisle to sit on Eisenhower’s right. Churchill bowed to his monarch, then resumed puffing his cigar. As they waited to begin at the stroke of ten A.M., these big men with their air of importance had reason to rejoice in their joint victories and to hope for greater victories still to come in this war. Sir Winston Churchill, prime minister of the United Kingdom, inspecting a crater left by a German bomb in London, September 10, 1940. 207-57516_01_6P.indd 3 3/10/14 10:33 AM Since September 1939, war had raged across Europe, even- tually spreading to North Africa and as far east as Moscow, capital of the Soviet Union. Germany, a country humiliated after World War I, had seen the rise of Adolf Hitler, a dictator who had dreams of conquering the continent. Beginning with Poland, his armies had crushed one nation after another, destroying cities and killing or enslaving millions of people. His collaborators in the Axis alliance, particularly Japan and Italy, pushed their own campaigns of aggression in Asia and Africa. Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, and Japan’s attack in December of that year on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, led to a grand alliance determined to stop the Axis. The United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union were the major Allied powers, but they were supported Adolf Hitler, führer of the Nazi Party (right), and Benito Mussolini, prime minister of Italy, in Munich, Germany, June 1940. 4 THE PLAN 207-57516_01_6P.indd 4 3/10/14 10:33 AM The U.S.S. Shaw explodes during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941. by dozens of other countries. At an enormous cost in blood, Soviet armies pushed the German invaders back through east- ern Europe, mile by mile. German casualties there exceeded three million, and in 1944 nearly two-thirds of Hitler’s combat power remained tied up in the east. The United States and Britain, meanwhile, had defeated German and Italian forces in North Africa. They then moved north across the Mediterranean Sea to conquer much of Italy, which surrendered and abandoned the Axis. The Third Reich, as Hitler called his empire, was ever more vulnerable to air attack. Allied planes flying from Britain, Italy, and Africa dropped thousands of tons of bombs on Germany and on German forces along various battle fronts.