Eisenhower had a second, secret D-day message
Eisenhower had a message for the world if D-day had failed. Any blame, he wrote, “is mine alone.” (REPEAT)
Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower was anxious and restless the night of June 5, 1944. He’d been working 20-hour days at his headquarters at Southwick House outside Portsmouth, England, planning the D-day invasion. The assault had already been postponed once by foul weather.
Eisenhower wasn’t sleeping well. He was drinking far too much coffee. He was smoking up to four packs a day of unfiltered Camels, according to Keith Huxen, senior director of research and history at the National WWII Museum in New Orleans.
The notes Gen. Eisenhower prepared for D-Day, win or loseOPEN LINK
And now Allied troops were launching. There was no turning back.
“Up to that point he was basically the most powerful man in the world — and then it’s out of his hands,” Huxen said. “There’s nothing he can do except hope the machinery he built works.”
In his private quarters inside a trailer on the Southwick grounds, Eisenhower wrote an Order of the Day to his troops. The first draft was typed. Eisenhower edited it in pencil.
https://www.latimes.com/nation/nationnow/la-na-eisenhower-d-day-message-story.html
