EISENHOWER HAD NEW worries too. Recent intelligence suggested the Germans might soon use poison gas on the battlefield. It was also said that enemy scientists were developing a ray capable of stopping Allied aircraft engines in flight.
Further, Eisenhower suffered yet another significant loss: on January 2, ice on the wings combined with pilot error during takeoff had caused a twin-engine Hudson to crash at airfield A-46, five miles south of Versailles. The fiery accident killed British Admiral Bertram Ramsay—among Eisenhower’s staunchest and most valued advisers—who was flying to Brussels for a conference with Montgomery about the defenses at Antwerp. On Sunday, January 7, a French naval band played Chopin’s funeral march as a gun carriage bore Ramsay’s coffin to a hillside grave above the Seine. The supreme commander joined mourners in the shuffling procession.
Later that afternoon, Eisenhower’s office calendar recorded, “E. leaves office early, 4:30 & goes home. He is very depressed these days.”
Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay in London, 1944