The Victors: Eisenhower and His Boys : The Men of World War II by Stephen Ambrose Page B

to takeoff, he found Feiler with crickets strapped to both arms, both legs, and an extra supply in his pockets.  At 6P.M. Eisenhower and a group of aides drove to Newbury, where the 101st Airborne was loading up for the flight to Normandy. The 101st was one of the units Leigh-Mallory feared would suffer 70 percent casualties. Eisenhower wandered around among the men, whose blackened faces gave them a grotesque look, stepping over packs, guns, and other equipment.  A group recognized him and gathered around. He chatted with them easily. He told them not to worry, that they had the best equipment and leaders. A sergeant said, “Hell, we ain’t worried, General. It’s the Krauts that ought to be worrying now.” When he met a trooper from Dodge City, Eisenhower gave him a thumbs up and said, “Go get ‘em, Kansas!” And a private piped up, “Look out, Hitler, here we come.” A Texan promised Eisenhower a job after the war on his cattle ranch. Eisenhower stayed until all the big C-47s were off the runway.  As the last plane roared into the sky Eisenhower turned to Kay Summersby, who was his driver that night, with a visible sagging in his shoulders. She saw tears in his eyes. He began to walk slowly toward his car. “Well,” he said quietly, “it’s on.”
    For Major Howard and the Ox and Bucks, June 5 had been a long day. In the morning the officers and men checked and rechecked their weapons. At noon they were told that it was on, that they should rest, eat, and then dress for battle.  The meal was fatless, to cut down on airsickness. Not much of it was eaten. Pvt.  Wally Parr explained why: “I think everybody had gone off of grub for the first time possibly in years.” Then they sat around, according to Parr, “trying to look so keen, but not too keen like.”
    Toward evening the men got into their trucks to drive to their gliders. They were a fearsome sight. They each had a rifle or a Sten gun or a Bren gun, six to nine grenades, four Bren-gun magazines. Some had mortars; one in each platoon had a wireless set strapped to his chest. They had all used black cork or burned coke to blacken their faces. (Pvt. Darky Baines, as he was called, one of the two black men in the company, looked at Parr when Parr handed him some cork and said, “I don’t think I’ll bother.”) Lt. David Wood remarked that they all, officers and men, were so fully loaded that “if you fell over it was impossible to get up without help.” (Each infantryman weighed 250 pounds, instead of the allotted 210.) Parr called out that the sight of them alone would be enough to scare the Germans out of their wits.
    As the trucks drove toward the gliders, Billy Gray could remember “the girls along the road, crying their eyes out.” On the trucks the men were given their code words. The recognition signal was “V,” to be answered by “for Victory.” The code word for the successful capture of the canal bridge was “Ham,” for the river bridge “Jam.” “Jack” meant the canal bridge had been captured but destroyed; “Lard” meant the same for the river bridge. Ham and Jam. D Company liked the sound of it, and as the men got out of their trucks they began shaking hands and saying, “Ham and Jam, Ham and Jam.”
    Howard called them together. “It was an amazing sight,” he remembered. “The smaller chaps were visibly sagging at the knees under the amount of kit they had to carry.” He tried to give an inspiring talk, but as he confessed, “I am a sentimental man at heart, for which reason I don’t think I am a good soldier. I found offering my thanks to these chaps a devil of a job. My voice just wasn’t my own.”
    Howard gave up the attempt at inspiration and told the men to load up. The officers shepherded them aboard, although not before every man, except Billy Gray, took a last-minute leak. Wally Parr chalked “Lady Irene” on the side of S.  Sgt. Jim Wallwork’s glider. As the officers fussed over the men