This time around, the 80th anniversary of the launching of Operation Overlord, we’re not seeing the news reporting as in commemorations past. Well, that’s partly due to the remaining participants being centenarians, probably. As well as to changes in journalism overall (prioritizing clicks over coverage), plus this being a presidential election year in a particularly circuslike atmosphere here in the States.
Plus—Republicans at this point are
uncomfortable with the notion that the Big War was fought against fascists, so
they’d just as soon forget about it.
But in thinking about it, I am reminded of one
particular element, which didn’t make it into most of the reports in the past,
but is, I think, a mark of how different things—and men—were then than they are
now.
The Normandy landings had been planned with
extraordinary thoroughness. I have always stood in shock and awe at the idea
that men and women from several nations (not to mention many different military
and government branches) put together the strategy, the intelligence, the
logistics, the training, the communication plans to get more than 150,000
soldiers and all the necessary matériel from the south of England to the
Normandy coast (and beyond).
And they did it without computers.
Without whiteboards, if you please!
Supreme Allied Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower
had overall responsibility, of course. Not to mention the heavy burden of
keeping rampaging egos like Montgomery and Patton somehow working as members of
a team. These days we’d refer to it as herding cats, only those two were very
big jungle cats with sharp claws and vicious teeth.
But here’s the detail I’m interested in at the
moment. Despite all the meticulous planning of this particular operation, it is
a primary maxim of military leadership that no battle plan survives first
contact with the enemy. In this instance, the weather—critical to safe landing
and ongoing support of several armies that were far from operational ports—was
a particular crapshoot. The only guaranteed result from pulling the trigger on
Overlord was that men were going to get killed. Success was just one possible
outcome.
So, in addition to the official “D-Day is
underway” proclamation, Eisenhower prepared an alternative announcement, the
one in which he admitted that the landings had failed, he’d pulled back the
troops and they would have to rethink the whole thing.
And he said, “The troops, the air and the navy
did all that bravery and devotion to duty could do. If any blame or fault
attaches to the attempt it is mine alone.”
He wrote this out in pencil—alone, no SHAEF PR
flunkies polishing it, no discussion with anyone in his chain of command—and he
put it in his pocket until such time as it might be necessary to have it typed
up and transmitted.
These days no one embarking on any
crack-brained self-aggrandizing political or corporate or military scheme on
someone else's dime even considers the remote possibility that
it could go belly-up. (Looking at you, AI.) So (and probably because of
that lack of forethought) when it (perhaps predictably) does go to hell in
smithereens, after much behind-the-scenes scuffling and consulting of PR
departments, crisis management companies, social media mavens, lawyers and other
miscellaneous spin-doctors, a statement is issued in which someone grudgingly
admits that “mistakes were made”, but the makers of those alleged mistakes are
never named. And they are certainly never the persons reading the statement to
the news outlets, Congressional committees or The View.
I am not a fan of the uncritical gushing about
“The Greatest Generation” that has occurred since Tom Brokaw wrote his paean.
The men and women blooded by the Great Depression indeed made the enormous
sacrifices they were called upon to make during the years 1939-1945. And I am
deeply grateful that they did. But I don’t see how it was somehow a greater
sacrifice than what was asked for in the years 1914-1918.
(And if you want to talk military service, do
not even try to tell me that the men and women who went to
Vietnam were somehow lesser beings than the ones who went to Iwo Jima or Anzio
or the Hürtgen Forrest. They suffered from bad military and political
leadership and lack of strategy, not from any moral deficit.)
However—when I compare this scratched-out
pencil draft of Eisenhower’s intent to accept full responsibility for the
failure of Overlord with any no-fault statements made by politicians, generals
or corporate executives caught in everything from flagrante delicto to
global embezzlement and multiple manslaughter, it is clear to me that something
indeed changed in the intervening 80 years.
And not for the better.
©2024 Bas Bleu
No comments:
Post a Comment