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Training exercises increased successively in scope, culminating in the full scale dress rehearsal
held in April on the Devonshire coast.  Conditions were set up as nearly as possible like those to be
encountered on the French coast and every detail of the operation was conducted just as it would be in
France.  This was our last “dry run’.  The next time would be for keeps.
 
Final revisions and corrections followed, last minute details were decided.  Then, in the latter
part of May, the largest military force ever to sail into action began to assemble in the marshaling camps
along the south coast of England.  Our reinforced VII Corps, known during the assault phase of the
operation as Assault Force “U”, loaded its 30,000 troops and 3,500 vehicles on 4 troop transport ships
and over 200 large landing craft at Plymouth, Brixham, Torquay, and Dartmouth, and there awaited
orders to sail.
 
D-Day had been set as June 5th, but the forecast of unfavorable weather for the landing on that
date resulted in the decision to postpone the attack one day.  Beginning on June 4th, and following
carefully arranged Naval plans, the great armada made up of the several assault forces of the Western
Naval Task Force sailed out into the English Channel, slowest convoys first, fastest ships last.  All were
escorted, protected on the sea by units of the American and British Navies and in the air by a cover of
Allied aircraft.  Apparently either the German command was caught off guard or the German air and
naval forces in France were so battered by the incessant Allied aerial bombardment that they were
unable to oppose the crossing, and in the darkness of the short summer night these thousands of ships
and boats assembled unmolested in their designated areas just off the French coast.  Then, at the
appointed hour, the naval crews went quietly about their well-rehearsed task of transferring the first
waves of troops and equipment to the small, speedy landing craft which would carry them to the
beaches.
Aerial view of a beach on the coast of France at low tide shows the
Obstacles that the enemy hoped would stop the Allied landing craft
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