Okay Boys. We’ll Go!

“OKAY BOYS. WE’LL GO!”

These are the words General Dwight Eisenhower uttered today as 150,000 men waited in troop transports on the impeding invasion of Nazi occupied Europe.

It was called D-DAY.

The weather was terrible. There were only a few days during that month of June in 1945 that an invasion was possible. June 6th was one of them. The tides at Normandy had to be just right. And yet to invade during a storm could be catastrophic for the allies. Seven thousand ships await the order. Twelve thousand aircraft. Thirteen thousands men of the 101st and 82nd Airborne, suited and ready to be dropped behind enemy lines, 4000 more aboard gliders to be flown behind the landing sites at Omaha and Utah Beach. They had to be dropped sometime around midnight. Everything was coiled like a taut, quivering spring.

But the weather? Will the weather hold?

Our boys will drown if the waves are too choppy. Our tanks will capsize and flood. The wind will drive our boys away from their landing sites. The greatest amphibious operation in history will be a colossal catastrophe if the weather turns against us.

But if we wait?

The Nazis may find us out. Break our code. Spies may reveal the plan. It is only a matter of time before Hitler discovers that southern England is a gigantic disembarkation point. How long can our luck hold? What do we do?

The meteorologists don’t have satellites. They must extrapolate from wind and barometric pressure to GUESS what the weather will do. Everything, EVERYTHING, hangs on this one, single decision.

And that decision falls entirely on the shoulders of Dwight David Eisenhower. If he calls it wrong, hundreds of thousands of men may die.

But it’s his call.

This decision will be made on this morning on this day, 76 years ago, June 5th. The General Staff of Supreme HQ Allied Expeditionary Forces Europe has assembled for this one reason. The weather.

Group Captain James Martin Stagg was the weatherman. The clouds were too low for our aircraft to see drop zones or targets, the English Channel was too rough for landing craft or amphibious tanks. But there was a chance, a chance, that there might be a brief hiatus in the bad weather. No promise, but a chance.

After the weather report is given, the room is quiet. Eisenhower’s staff consults their commander. But now it is all Eisenhower. It’s his call.

The General leaned back in his chair and closes his eyes—sat quietly for some time according to the memory of many in the room. Ten to 15 of the greatest generals and admirals of WWII will wait on his order. Omar Bradley, Bernard Montgomery, Air Marshall Arthur Tedder, Biddle Smith, Admiral Ramsey. We have forgotten these names, but these are the men who saved our civilization from the monsters of Hitler and National Socialism.

“Well there it is. Okay boys. We’ll go.”

There are several accounts of this critical moment. In the midst of so great a conflagration, the words seem strangely awkward and halting. None of the accounts are exactly the same. But these are the words that we are pretty sure were uttered.

But note that they are not the grand eloquence of a Napoleon or the strutting wors of a Caesar. They are the words of a somewhat common man from Texas, who grew up in Kansas, who played baseball and loved it.

And he saved the world.

Some of the greatest decisions in the history of the human race and in the history of one’s own life are decision that are made without certainty—and sometimes made without much confidence—but they shape the outcome of life itself. The weather might not have held. The fact that it did had nothing to do with Eisenhower.

But in some spiritual sense it did.

For had that man from Kansas waited, the weather would have come and gone without the allies flinging themselves against evil. And had the weather turned violent against the landing, Hitler would have remained in power. The decision was right, not for the correctness of predicting the weather, but for the willingness to risk all to do the right, when the right demanded the risk of all.

That’s what heroes do.

On September 17th of this year the Dwight Eisenhower Memorial will open in Washington DC to the public. I’ve been watching its construction for over a year now. It is located directly across from the Air and Space Museum on Independence Ave..

If you decide to come, and I hope you do, I’ll show you the memorial to the man who changed the world with the simplest, most understated words of all time: Ok Boys. We’ll go!