Men were given escape aids, in case of capture. “These were very Boy Scoutish things,” Major Howard remarked. They included a metal file to be sewn into the uniform blouse, a brass pants button that had been magnetized so that when balanced on a pin-head it became a tiny compass, a silk scarf with the map of France on it, water-purifying tablets, and French francs (printed by the U.S. and U.K. governments, over de Gaulle’s loud protest, about $10 worth to a man). “This sort of thing absolutely thrilled the troops to bits,” Howard said. “I have never seen such enthusiasm about such simple things.”⁴

Every soldier got a brand-new weapon. The rifles and machine guns had to be test-fired and zeroed in on the firing range. Slaughter remembered “unlimited amounts of ammo were given to each of us for practice firing. Bayonets and combat knives were honed to a keen edge.”⁵

Every man was given a new set of clothing, impregnated with a chemical that would ward off poison gas. They hated those uniforms. Pvt. Edward Jeziorski of the 507th PIR spoke for all the men of D-Day when he declared, “They were the lousiest, the coldest, the clammiest, the stiffest, the stinkiest articles of clothing that were ever dreamed up to be worn by individuals. Surely the guy that was responsible for the idea on this screw-up received a Distinguished Service Medal from the devil himself.”⁶ (The men wore these uniforms through the Normandy campaign, in some cases longer; the chemical prevented the cloth from “breathing,” so the men froze in them at night, sweated up a storm by day, and stank always.)

By contrast, the food was wonderful. “Steak and pork chops with all of the trimmings,” Slaughter recalled, “topped with lemon meringue pie, were items on a typical menu, and it was all-you-can-eat.” Fresh eggs—the first most of the men had enjoyed since arriving in England—plus ice cream, white bread, and other previously unavailable luxuries were devoured with relish, accompanied by the inevitable crack that “they’re fattening us up for the kill.”⁷

Theaters were set up inside wall tents, where first-run movies just over from Hollywood were run nonstop, with free popcorn and candy. Most soldiers can remember the names of those movies, if not the plots—favorites included Mr. Lucky with Cary Grant and Laraine Day, Going My Way with Barry Fitzgerald and Bing Crosby, and The Song of Bernadette.

Training was over. Until the briefings began, aside from firing weapons and sharpening knives, or watching movies, there was little to do. Cpl. Peter Masters remembered it as a “time without end.” After the intense activity of the previous months, the superbly conditioned men quickly grew bored. According to Masters, “Total war begins in the concentration area, because when people are fully charged with ammunition, somebody will get their finger on the trigger by mistake. Occasionally there were casualties. One heard a burst and a shout—‘Medics!’ ”⁸ At Company A, 116th Regiment, a joker threw a clip of M-l .30-caliber bullets into a burning barrel; the guys in the area laughed and cursed and ran away.⁹

As the days went by, tension mounted, tempers grew shorter. “It didn’t take much of a difference of opinion to bring out the sporting instinct,” Private Jeziorski recalled.¹⁰ Fistfights were common. Lt. Richard Winters of the 506th got into a scrap with Lt. Raymond Schmitz and cracked two of Schmitz’s vertebrae, which sent him to the hospital.¹¹ As always in an army camp, especially so in this one, rumors of every imaginable kind raced through the sausages.

Sports was one way to burn off some of the pent-up energy. At first footballs were handed out, but most company commanders put a stop to that when the games got too rough and some bones were broken. Softball was better; there were barrels full of gloves and balls and constant games of catch. A number of men recalled that these were the last games of catch they ever played because of wounds received or arms lost during the ensuing campaign.

The sausages included libraries, composed of paperback books. (The paperback revolution in publishing had begun in 1939 when Pocket Books brought out ten titles at $.25 each; Avon Books came along in 1941, quickly followed by Popular Library and Dell. There were special, reduced-size, free Armed Services Editions; 22 million copies were printed for American servicemen.) One of the most popular was A Tree Grows in Brooklyn but, somewhat surprisingly, the top was The Pocket Book of Verse. (For morale purposes, it contained none of the bitter poems from the English veterans of World War I.¹²)

Gambling was the favorite boredom killer. There were virtually nonstop poker and crap games. Large amounts of money changed hands. Pvt. Arthur “Dutch” Schultz of the 505th PIR won $2,500 in a crap game. “I know because I stopped and took the time to count it,” he remembered. “I had broken everyone in the game except for a staff sergeant whom I disliked intensely and who had $50 left. I was bound and determined to take all of his money. My luck changed and I lost my $2,500.”¹³

There was no liquor available. A few men managed to sneak out of their sausages and go to local pubs to quench their thirst, but quick arrests by MPs brought that to an end. Maj. David Thomas, the 508th PIR’s surgeon, recalled that the medics were each given a canteen of alcohol to use for sterilization purposes when they got to Normandy. He dryly remarked, “I doubt that a drop of it ever got out of England.”¹⁴

Company commanders marched their men on the roads. This gave them some exercise and helped relieve the boredom or ease the tension; it also gave them some sense of the scope of the enterprise and a sense of confidence that a fighting force of such immensity could not be denied. Marching through the countryside and small villages, they saw unbelievable amounts of equipment, uncountable numbers of aircraft. And they saw the might of the free world gathered to destroy the Nazis; men in the uniforms of New Zealand, Norway, Poland, France, Australia, Canada, Britain, Holland, Belgium, and the United States. As Sergeant Slaughter recalled, “Soldiers from every Allied nation from all around the world seemed to be everywhere.”¹⁵

Some of the resentment felt by the Tommies toward the Yanks came out. Corporal Masters remembered marching with 3 Troop past an American unit, also out marching. A couple of Yanks had stopped to chat with a mother and her three-year-old daughter (all communication with civilians was strictly forbidden but done anyway). Almost surely the little girl was asking the question all children in Britain had long since learned to ask of the GIs: “Got any gum, chum?”

“But as we marched past,” Masters said, “a disgusted voice at the back of our lot growled at the Americans, ‘At least you could let them grow up!’ ”¹⁶

AMONG THE MILLIONS of men gathered in southern England to participate in the invasion of France, only a handful knew the secrets of Overlord—where the assault would go ashore, and when. Those few had a supersecurity designation, above Top Secret, called Bigot; they were said to be “bigoted.”

Slowly the circle of those in the know widened. SHAEF and Twenty-first Army Group staff officers briefed army and corps staffs, who in turn briefed division and regimental commanders, right on down to company and platoon officers, who passed the information on to their noncoms and privates. At the lower levels the place-names were not revealed until the men were actually sailing for France; otherwise the briefings were extraordinarily detailed and accurate with regard to terrain features, fairly realistic about the numbers and quality of the German defenders, and wildly optimistic about what the naval and air bombardments were going to do to those defenders.

The briefings were done on sand tables or, in the case of the 12th Regiment, 4th Division, on a huge sponge-rubber replica of the Cotentin Peninsula made to scale both horizontally and vertically, complete in minute detail with roads, bridges, buildings, power lines, hedgerows, fortifications, and obstacles. One member of the 12th recalled, “It was as though the men had been suddenly transported by plane and were looking down on the very beaches they would soon land on and the very ground over which they would have to fight.”¹⁷