Cornelius Ryan was a 24-year-old reporter when he had a chance to see a defining moment in the defining event of the 20th century — the Allied landings on the coast of France to retake France and bring down Hitler.
Ryan at first witnessed the invasion from a bomber that flew over the beaches. Then, back in England, he scrambled to find the only thing he could that was going to Normandy. A torpedo boat that, he learned too late, had no radio. “And if there’s one thing that an editor is not interested in,” he said, “it’s having a reporter somewhere he can’t write a story.”
Recalling those five hours off the coast, watching the struggle on the beaches, he remembered “the magnitude of the thing, the vastness. I felt so inadequate to describe it.”
But today, as the 71st anniversary of D-Day approaches on June 6, Ryan is most likely to be remembered for being the one who did describe it, who told so many millions the real story of what happened that day, in his book which became the famous movie, “The Longest Day.”
When D-Day took place, I was an 18-year-old girl in Chicago, due at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism in September. And yet I would come to learn a surprising amount about the historic battle.
In January 1947, I presided over a press conference at which U.S. Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower publicly revealed for the first time the greatest decision he’d had to make during the war — the 82nd and 101st Airborne landings in the early morning hours of D-Day.
In September 1962, I interviewed Cornelius Ryan before the New York premiere of the film. Ryan had become the authority on the events of June 6, 1944, following publication of his book. And as he himself noted, in the 10 years it took him to research and write the book, he became “a veritable depository of D-Day memorabilia.”
He shared some of what he’d learned as we talked in the study of his home in Ridgefield, Connecticut, that Sunday afternoon.
Both sides were terrified
“I discovered about the Battle of Normandy — the invasion — that both sides were terrified of the other…. In war, there is a type of umbilical cord between the attacker and the attacked, and that umbilical cord is fear.
“Something else — would you believe this? — but none of the Allied soldiers I interviewed, and I interviewed quite a few and was in contact with some 6,000 men on this one battle, none of the Allied soldiers could tell me whether the water was hot or cold that day. Not one.”
When he did tell the story, he made a point to report all sides, because, “The American histories rarely talked about the British participants. And the British rarely talked about the American participation. And nobody mentioned the fact that the French were there — or the Canadians.”
Not so in “The Longest Day.”
“My book in some respects went from the Allied side to the German side very bluntly, without any transition,” he said, “because that’s the way war is, because the invasion was a perfect canvas of confusion, for both sides.”
When I mentioned Ike and his decision, Ryan’s objective-historian-reporter tone underwent a subtle change.
“The airborne units — the British, American and Canadians –they were indeed the bravest of the brave because these men dropped in the darkness over Normandy, before everybody else, and on their shoulders lay the whole success of the drive toward the various beaches to secure the causeways, and so on, for the troops landing from the sea.”
Ryan said he was frequently asked whether the film had been shot in black and white so they could use actual D-Day footage. Not so. Both he and producer Darryl F. Zanuck wanted the real-life, newsreel-quality of black and white film, he said. He also said virtually no authentic film of the invasion exists.
“Believe it or not, on D-Day, most of the 16 millimeter that was to be shot was to come from automatic cameras mounted on tanks that were to go in. And of these tanks — 74 were due to land at Omaha Beach, the same number at Utah Beach — only seven tanks at Omaha Beach landed. The others were sunk. Of the few cameramen who did indeed land, the casualties and the fire were so great that the last thing anyone wanted to do was just sit up there with a camera.
“Most of the stuff that you have seen on television is phonier than a three-dollar bill. It’s training film shot in England.”
At which point he ticked off some of the geographical points and terrain easily recognizable to one who’s been there. “Of what was shot of D-Day, authentic film, I don’t believe there is more than three or four minutes.”
Recalling the torpedo boat with no radio, he said he thought that if a psychiatrist ever got him on a couch, he’d probably tell him that not being able to file then was a factor in later wanting to tell the story.
Drawn back to Normandy
The following year, Ryan was drawn back to Normandy.
“I happened to be there one day with the mayor when a message came that something funny was being pulled in. We went down to the harbor. The fishermen were pulling in their nets, and in them was a 105 howitzer. Sitting on the rear axle of this was a skeleton, in a shroud of seaweed. You could tell he was a soldier because he still wore a helmet.”
In 1949, the U.S. State Department and the French Foreign Office invited the D-Day correspondents to return to Normandy for the fifth anniversary of D-Day. And the book idea took hold.
“I think it crystallized,” he said, “as I was walking along Omaha Beach and saw the sort of Dalie-esque, rusted hull of the landing craft — with the children playing around them, saw the shrapnel laying about the sand, picking it up, and wondered if it had passed through somebody’s body, or whether it was just spent.
“I looked up and saw the wrecked bunkers there, overlooking Omaha Beach, and wondered what happened to the Germans.”
He would find one of those Germans — Werner Pluskat.
Pluskat had gone down to the bunker in the early morning hours of D-Day to see what might be happening because there was some concern the invasion might be on. He scanned the horizon with his binoculars. Nothing.
Then, after chatting with the men stationed there, he decided to take one last look as light broke. In Ryan’s words:
Through the scattering, thinning mist the horizon was magically filling with ships — ships of every size and description, ships that casually maneuvered back and forth as though they had been there for hours. There appeared to be thousands of them. It was a ghostly armada that somehow had appeared from nowhere. Pluskat stared in frozen disbelief, speechless, moved as he had never been before in his life.
He called back to division headquarters. The major there scoffed at his report. “There must be 10,000 ships out here.” Even, as he said it, Ryan said, he knew his words must sound incredible.
And they did. “Get hold of yourself, Pluskat!” snapped the major at division headquarters. “The Americans and the British don’t have that many ships. Nobody has that many ships.”
To which Pluskat yelled, “If you don’t believe me, come up here and see for yourself. It’s fantastic! It’s unbelievable!”
After a slight pause, the officer asked, “What way are they headed?”
Pluskat said: “Right for me.”
The greatest armada
Almost 5,000 ships. “The greatest armada,” in Ryan’s words, “the world had ever known.”
“Never had there been a dawn like this,” wrote Ryan. “In the murky, gray light, in majestic, fearful grandeur, the great Allied fleet lay off Normandy’s five invasion beaches. The sea teemed with ships. Battle ensigns snapped in the wind all the way across the horizon from the edge of the Utah area on the Cherbourg peninsula to Sword Beach near the mouth of the Orne.
“Outlined against the sky were the big battlewagons, the menacing cruisers, the whippetlike destroyers. Behind them were the squat command ships, sprouting their forests of antennae. And behind them came the convoys of troop-filled transports and landing ships, lying low and sluggish in the water. Circling the lead transports, waiting for the signal to head for the beaches, were swarms of bobbing landing craft, jam-packed with the men who would land in the first waves.”
D-Day.
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