"The Light of Battle," Michel Paradis

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

Burrowing into Books

The Light of Battle, Michel Paradis

September 28, 2024

 

“He had wanted to be a general since he was a little boy…”

 

“He wore ambition lightly.”

 

The Light of Battle: Eisenhower, D-Day, and the Birth of the American Superpower, 2024

                                                                                                                                Michel Paradis

 

The two quotes appear contradictory, and to an extent they are – the first appears on page 15, and the second in the “Author’s Note” on page 410. But they help explain the boy raised on a Kansas farm, in the last decade of the 19^th Century – a boy who became Supreme Commander of Operation Overlord, the invasion of Normandy in June 1944.

 

In this deeply-researched book, Mr. Paradis tells the story of the preparation for Overlord, from the Cairo Conference in early December 1943 when President Roosevelt informed Prime Minister Winston Churchill of his decision to name General Eisenhower as Supreme Commander of Allied forces, to June 6, 1944. Eisenhower, not George Marshall, was the perfect choice, in part because of his experience in Washington and North Africa, but mostly because his modesty permitted him to deal with talented prima donnas like Montgomery and Patton, as well as with FDR, Churchill, and even Stalin and de Gaulle. He was allowed to build his own team. In Paradis’ words: “Looking forward to Operation Overlord, Eisenhower’s priority was building the right team because if he had learned anything over the past year, it was that putting the right people in the right positions was the most important decision he made.”

 

But it wasn’t just people who made this job challenging. He had to coordinate the different armed forces – army, navy and air – from two different countries. He had to get the number of ships needed to land 150,000 troops, thousands of vehicles, including tanks and minesweepers, as well as food, water and medical supplies on D-Day. He had to consider civilian casualties and whether to use white phosphorus munitions. Weather was a worry, as were the delays it might cause, as the British had learned at Dieppe. Churchill wanted a simultaneous landing on the south of France, which complicated the movement of LSTs. Keep in mind, at the same time Eisenhower was planning the invasion, German resistance In Italy had intensified. Allied forces, north of Anzio, were bogged down. After advancing the approximately four hundred miles from Sicily to Naples in four months, it took four more months for the Allies to press on the last forty miles from Anzio to Rome, which was finally reached in early June 1944.  

 

As readers, we are guided through this maze of logistic and bureaucratic threats and objections that Eisenhower faced. But we are also offered snippets of his early life, his family, and his personal life, including his relationship with Kay Summersby. In answer to the question of why another book on Eisenhower and D-Day, Mr. Paradis answers by noting that one effect of World War II was that the U.S. displaced the British Empire as the unrivaled leader of the West, and of the consequential role played by General Eisenhower in becoming the first U.S. President to be called “Leader of the Free World.”

 

Thousands of books have been written about Eisenhower and D-Day. This one deserves a spot near the head of the list.