Radio could not provide information, but it could provide inspiration. After the recording of Eisenhower’s reading of his order of the day, the king of Norway spoke to his people, followed by the premiers of the Netherlands and Belgium, then the king of England. All these were repeated throughout the day.

Thin as the news was on the radio, it was a comfort. A California woman wrote Paul White, a CBS announcer: “It is 0321 here on the Pacific Coast. I was fortunate enough to hear the first radio news of D-Day break from CBS this morning, as I have spent all my evenings waiting at the radio these past two months. . . . Your London report from Mr. Murrow gave me a feeling that though I’m at least one world’s distance from my husband and alone, I will not feel that way as long as you and your staff keep on the job.”⁷

On D-Day, Franklin Roosevelt used the power of radio to link the nation in a prayer. Throughout the day the networks broadcast the text, which was printed in the afternoon editions of the newspapers; at 2200 Eastern War Time the president prayed while Americans across the country joined him:

“Almighty God: Our sons, pride of our nation, this day have set upon a mighty endeavor. . . .

“Lead them straight and true; give strength to their arms, stoutness to their hearts, steadfastness in their faith. . . .

“These men are lately drawn from the ways of peace. They fight not for the lust of conquest. They fight to end conquest. They fight to liberate. . . . They yearn but for the end of battle, for their return to the haven of home.

“Some will never return. Embrace these, Father, and receive them, Thy heroic servants, into Thy kingdom. . . .

“And, O Lord, give us faith. Give us faith in Thee; faith in our sons; faith in each other. . . . Thy will be done, Almighty God. Amen.”⁸

“WHAT DOES THE ‘D’ stand for?” a passerby asked Eustace Tilley.

“Why, it just stands for ‘Day,’ ” the New Yorker correspondent rightly answered.^II Writing about the incident, he went on: “D-Day was a unique experience, a colossal moment in history.”

His stroll about town took him to Times Square, where a crowd watched the electric news bulletin. “AND ONE GERMAN GUN IS STILL FIRING,” it read. “Nobody seemed to think that the one German gun was trivial; it was solemnly weighed along with the other bits of news from the beachheads.” A reporter for the New York Times noted that “people stood on the sidewalk near the curb or against the plate glass windows of shops and restaurants on all sides of the little triangle looking up, always looking up to catch even a glimpse of the invasion news.”⁹

Tilley joined a hundred or so citizens outside the Rialto Theatre. Men were “clustered together and were talking about the course of history during the past twenty-five years. . . . Everybody waited his turn and made his points without raising his voice more than was necessary. . . . The sober talk was still going on when we left.”

He went to one of the network broadcasting studios “and found the corridors full of radio actors, all somewhat upset by the cancellation of the soap-opera programs.”

Over the radio, he heard once again the Eisenhower recording. “General Eisenhower’s words are tied up with the image of D-Day that will, we think, remain in our mind the longest. Up in the Modern Museum, an old lady, seated on an angular plywood chair, was reading the General’s message aloud to several other old ladies who stood clustered around her. ‘I call upon all who love freedom to stand with us,’ she read, in a thin voice, and a shiver ran through the group.”

NEW YORK CITY on June 6, 1944, was a bustling, prosperous place. Everyone had jobs and more cash than there were products to buy. Apartments were hard to impossible to find; people doubled and tripled up. Bars and movie theaters were jammed. The spring season on Broadway was a big success, topped by Oklahoma! by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein, Paul Robeson in Othello, Milton Berle in Ziegfeld Follies, and Mary Martin in One Touch of Venus (with music by Kurt Weill, book by S. J. Perelman and Ogden Nash, staged by Elia Kazan, with dances by Agnes de Mille)—those were the days.

Broadway shut down on D-Day. The actors went to the Stage Door Canteen to perform a scene or two from their plays for servicemen. Only one table, “The Angel’s Table,” was available to nonservicemen; it was reserved “for those civilians whose mildly royal donations win them the privilege of admission to the Canteen.” The donations went to the servicemen’s organizations.¹⁰

The New York Daily News threw out its lead articles and printed in their place the Lord’s Prayer. The New York Daily Mirror eliminated all advertising from its columns so as to have room for invasion news.