D-Day Remembered
by Diane Romano

As I sat down to memorialize my thoughts on D-Day, I once again checked the Mickey Mouse/code word claims (not wishing to sound like the uninformed commuter) and found a 2016 quotation from a director of the National World War II Museum in New Orleans who, with a certain amount of pique,  put to bed the Mickey Mouse/code word/D-Day claim:

There is a myth that the password was "Mickey Mouse." Operation Overlord was not a Mickey Mouse project. In truth, the password was "Flash”, and the countersign was "Thunder." The troops were also issued brass crickets, a small toy that made a clicking sound when squeezed in order to recognize friendlies in the dark. One click was answered by two clicks. 

The next intriguing D-Day nomenclature that caught my imagination was the phrase “the longest day”, its origin and how Cornelius Ryan came to name his book and, subsequently, Daryl Zanuck, his 1962 film, The Longest Day.

Some have mistakenly attributed the expression to Field Marshall Erwin Rommel, but it is widely held that it was a member of Rommel’s staff who said, “for the Allies, as well as for Germany, the first 24 hours after the invasion will be the longest day.”

Many a young student will have asked for what “D” in D-Day stands.  It merely stands for “day”.  The dictionary generically describes D-day as the day on which an important event or change is to take place and, specifically, as the 6 June1944 Allied forces’ invasions of northern France via the beaches at Normandy.”   No mystery there.

The last bit of information, and I saved the best for last, is about a Portuguese man named Juan Pujol, who was a double agent known as “Garbo” to the allies and “Arabel” to the Germans.  Once again, I defer to the experts of the National World War II Museum in New Orleans (www.nationalww2museum.org):

In January 1941, Juan Pujol Garcia (1912-1988), an anti-Fascist, decided to offer his services to spy for Britain, but he was refused. He then offered himself to the Germans with the plan to become a double agent for the British. The Germans were not interested either but told Pujol if he could get to England and send a report they would reconsider. Pujol only made it as far as Lisbon, but there he began to concoct “intelligence” derived from public sources and attributed to a network of fictitious sub-agents. Despite the reports having errors because Pujol had never been to Britain, the Germans were impressed enough to begin paying him. Pujol’s reports were intercepted and decoded by GC&CS, and by February of 1942, MI-6’s Section V (counterespionage) identified Pujol as the author and recruited him. A bureaucratic fight over territory broke out and because Pujol was supposed to be spying in Britain, MI-5’s BIA department acquired him from MI-6. Pujol had come a long way from being a reject to a star.

By June 1944, Pujol had a network of some 26 agents (all false) producing a constant stream of hundreds of coded messages, all drafted by Pujol and his case officer Tomas Harris. In July 1944, in recognition of Pujol’s warning about an imminent invasion (wrong day and wrong place, the Pas De Calais), his German case officer sent the news that Pujol had been awarded the Iron Cross. After the war, it was discovered that 86 specific messages from Pujol had been included in high level German intelligence summaries. This was the highest number of all the D-Day spies mentioned in this article.

After the war, Pujol vanished for many years until Nigel West, author of several books on MI-6 and MI-5, traced Pujol (sic) to Venezuela. Pujol agreed to meet West in New Orleans on May 20, 1984. They collaborated on a book about” his life; Pujol was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE.)

Nigel West’s book is called Operation Garbo: The Personal Story of the Most Successful Double Agent of World War II for those of you interested in studies of espionage and intrigue.   Pujol is the only person to be awarded both the MBE and the German Iron Cross.

It was Juan Pujol’s little-known story, the film The Longest Day, and my Uncle John Romano’s service in Company F, 330^th Infantry Regiment, 83^rd Division, that arrived at Normandy D-Day+12, which set my desire to travel to the beaches of Normandy ablaze.  I traveled to France in 2006 to visit the beaches of Normandy.  It was an experience I will never forget.

Gone were the steel barriers constructed by the Germans to thwart Allied entry onto the beaches and the shells that permanently scarred the land at Pointe du Hoc.  The British and Canadian beaches dubbed Gold and Juno, respectively,  are calm now, the mighty cliffs the Americans scaled at Omaha and Utah are silent.  In all 4,414 Allied troops lost their lives at Normandy and fill 27 cemeteries near the French coast.  The Germans lost 80,000 troops in Normandy, most of whom are buried inland apart from the Allied dead.

As the 78^th anniversary of the Allied landing at Normandy approaches, my thoughts turn to the words of the Supreme Leader of the Allied Expeditionary Forces Dwight D. Eisenhower in a letter sent to every American soldier, sailor, and airman, reminding them that the eyes of the world were upon them as they joined with their allies and brothers-in-arms in the Great Crusade to end Nazi tyranny over the “oppressed people of Europe and security for ourselves”.  He closed by wishing them good luck and asking all to beseech Almighty God for His blessing upon that “great and noble undertaking.”