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Copyright © 2014 by Rick Atkinson

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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

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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

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List of MapsAssault on Normandy, June 1944 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Final OVERLORD Plan, June 6, 1944 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Map Legend . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Allied Countries and Chain of Command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Axis Countries and Chain of Command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . World War II Timeline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Key Players . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A Note to Readers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .The Plan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Invasion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Epilogue: The Days That Followed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The United States Declaration of War on Germany . . . . . . . . The Five Greatest Tanks of the War . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Largest Battleships of the War . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Most Effective Bombers of the War . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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50159172174175176

contents

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Weapons Carried by U.S., U.K., Canadian, and German Ground Troops . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Carrier Pigeons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Operation Fortitude: The Inflatable Army . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Caring for the Wounded . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Clothing and Equipment Issued to a New GI in 1943 . . . . . . . . . Monthly Pay for an American GI in 1940 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . What They Carried—U.S. Airborne Divisions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . What They Carried—U.S. Ground Assault Troops . . . . . . . . . . .K Rations: Food on the Go for American Troops . . . . . . . . . Numbers Tell Part of the Story . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . operation overlord timeline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Glossary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Places to Visit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .For More Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . image credits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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a note to readersMy 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.

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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.

Allied command team behind D-Day (clockwise from top left): Lieutenant General Omar

Bradley, Commander, U.S. First Army; Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay, Naval Commander

in Chief; Air Chief Marshal Sir Trafford Leigh-Mallory, Air Commander in Chief; Lieutenant

General Walter Bedell Smith, SHAEF Chief of Staff; General Sir Bernard Montgomery, Commander,

21st Army Group (all Allied land forces); General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Commander;

Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Tedder, Deputy Supreme Commander. February 1, 1944.

al Omar al Omar

mander mander

Lieutenant Lieutenant

y, Commander,

y, Commander,

Commander; Commander;

ry 1, 1944.ry 1, 1944.

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1

In this room, the greatest Anglo-American

military 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

GatheringThe

May 5, 1944

THE GATHERING

In thmilita

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2

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

THE PLAN

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.

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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

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.

His Imperial Majesty

King George VI

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4

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

THE PLAN

Adolf Hitler, führer of the Nazi Party (right),

and Benito Mussolini, prime minister of Italy,

in Munich, Germany, June 1940.

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5

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. City by city, factory

THE GATHERING

The U.S.S. Shaw explodes during the Japanese

attack on Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941.

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6

by factory, Germany was a country increasingly in flames.

Although they paid a staggering cost in airplanes and flight

crews, the U.S. Army Air Forces, Britain’s Royal Air Force, and

the Canadian Air Force had won mastery of the European skies,

even as Allied navies controlled the seas.

By the late spring of 1944, the Allies were ready to attempt

something that had long seemed impossible: to invade what

the Germans called “Fortress Europe” and begin the final cam-

paign that would free citizens who had been enslaved since

Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939. The hour of

liberation had nearly arrived.

THE PLAN

A U.S. propaganda poster encourages increased

production prior to D-Day, 1943–1944.

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