For history in journalism. He is the author of seven books including narratives of five different american wars. All of these are known for their Extensive Research and histories. They include the liberation trilogy, the first volume of this trilogy won the Pulitzer Prize in 2003 for history. All three copies are available so, available for sale in the back. He will also be signing copies later tonight of his latest book, the british are coming the war for america. Lexington to princeton. Again, multiple copies are available in the back. Rick and tim we are extremely privileged to have you here with us tonight and we are looking forward to a wonderful evening. It is all yours. [ applause ] thank you so much. When i walk into a room like this, i always thought the, seek out the First World War ii veterans. We have these guys in the front row here. I am always drawn to them and want to know what their story was, where they were, what theater they served in and their own personal stories. They are so humble that they do not want to get into it too deeply. I think we owe them a round of applause before we begin tonight. [ applause ] both these guys observed in europe and one just said to the other, that is for us. The applause. If there was any doubt, if there was any doubt. So, here we are. This is an incredible crowd and we are in an incredible race, the atlanta history center. I am with one of the greatest authors, one of those guys they mention in the same breath as Cornelius Ryan and some of the other most famous authors who have written about military history. Rick atkinson is one of my favorite authors. I am extremely happy to be with you tonight. Dday is right around the corner and that is why we are here tonight. On june 4, dday was supposed to be june 5, but it was postponed because of the weather. There were men all over in these encampments. They could not go anywhere. They could not talk to anybody. What is going through their mind as they think that dday is going to be the next day. What do you think is their anxiety level at that point . First, thank you for having me here. It is good to be in atlanta and im grateful for the conversation. I think the anxiety level is about as high as it can be. Put yourself in their shoes. They do not know where they are going. They just referred to their destination as the far shore because they know their going probably across the English Channel somewhere, but they are not sure where. They have trained a lot but in some cases, only recently, they arrived in england and are pouring into britain by the tens of thousands every week in the spring of 1944. Arriving 15,000 at a time on the two queens, the queen mary and the queen elizabeth. Ocean liners that could carry an entire division and outrun german submarines to make the crossing from new york to britain in five days. As we get into june, they know that something is happening. The ships have been loaded since early may. There is a lot to get on those ships. You need 7000 combat necessities from bazooka rockets to turn kids on the beaches in the first few hours. All those things have been loading into 22 different reddish ports. The individual soldiers continue their training, they continue to prepare for an Amphibious Landing of some sort or an airborne assault, if they are in the airborne units. They do not know when dday is going to be and as you say, they are a moving target because of the weather. The letters that they write, just in case letters and in some cases, they are very poignant. They are poetic in some instances. All this is a great churn of emotion. Some of them have been in combat before, the First Infantry Division has been in north africa and they have been to sicily, these are combat veterans. They are going to land on omaha beach. They do not know it yet, but that is where they are going. Others are really quite green. Some have never heard a shot fired in anger. So you have that mix. You have a mix of leaders at all levels from lieutenants who are leading platoons all the way up to eisenhower. They all have their mortgage of emotions going through them the lunge of emotions going through them. I do not think it takes a lot of imagination for them to realize that this is a fraud moment. This is a moment that is on the hinges of history. They know it is a big deal. Even if you are a 19yearold private who has never seen anything other than your hometown until you get to england, you know that you are part of something grand and important and critical. So, i think this is all happening as we get closer and closer toward each hour. When you look at Group Captain james stagg who was the chief meteorologist on eisenhowers staff, we always like to yell at our local meteorologist when our daughters softball game gets canceled, the weight of this entire invasion hinges on him getting this forecast right, that there is going to be a break. On june 5, it is raining mawhinney, the shutters at Southwick House where ike is, they are rattling. And you have this meteorologist who has to give eisenhower the word. Can you imagine the pressure under, just hanging over him to be able to look in eisenhowers eyes and say i can green tea you 48 hours, otherwise this invasion will have to be called off for a month. What kind of pressure was he under. I think you described it pretty well. The weather is just about as bad as it gets in the English Channel in the early summer. It was a very unusual storm that was blowing through. They were watching millibars and barometric pressure, they have a pretty sophisticated weather system that has been set up and they are tracking fronts coming across the north atlantic and they know what the weather is like south of greenland and they have airplanes doing the kind of testing that is required at the time. Still, it is a fairly primitive art in 1944. You dont have satellite, you do not have the sophistication that we have today and we still miss things today. The decision has been made, correctly, that the conditions are just too harsh for the invasion to go forward on june 5. There are certain parameters that are required. The wind cant be too high for the paratroopers, otherwise it could be catastrophic for men jumping out of airplanes with parachutes on. The waves have to be below a certain level, the seas have to be calm enough for the tiny flotillas of Landing Craft to go in. There are a lot of moving pieces in trying to understand what the weather conditions are and how conducive they are to launching a very complex invasion. And so, you are right, the Weather Window is quite narrow. The moon has to be at a certain position, you have got to have enough light to do this, but not enough light to be revealed. So, that narrows the window. So stagg goes to eisenhower in the senior staff and says you know, i think we have got a spot. I think the weather will break enough to allow you to do it. It is marginal, it is still going to be nasty on the English Channel, youre going to have a lot of seasick slow, to soldiers. It will be tough on the airborne guys, tough on the pilots because there will be substantial cloud cover. But, i think we can do it. And then of course, the weight shifts from his shoulders to eisenhowers shoulders. And the pressure, he is accustomed by this point to ordering young men to their deaths. To the extent that you can ever get accustomed to that. Not everybody in the world is built to be able to do that sort of thing. Here, he has this incredibly difficult decision to make about whether or not to gamble, to roll the dice. And, he doesnt, obviously. He makes the decision and he says very simply, lets go. And thats the right decision. You know, the trait that napoleon most appreciated and his generals was lock luck. Good trait. It is not underestimated in life and certainly never to be underestimated in war. And, here we see eisenhowers luck holding. He makes a hard decision. It is the right decision as it turns out. And it is a lucky decision. That is what you want in your commander in chief. You want a guy who has luck on his side you want him to have the fortitude to make that kind of decision, but you also want providence on his side. George washington would call it providence. And he has got providence. And he smoked a lot of cigarettes during that time. Four packets a day. He was a nervous guy. He had the weight of the world on his shoulders and he had written that noted that if the invasion failed that he had taken the responsibility personally that it was his call to make. He is smoking four packs of camels per day. His Blood Pressure is 176 100, something. Stage ii hypertension. And, of course, he feels constrained not to show it. You do not want your subordinates thinking that you are a bundle of nerves. It makes everybody a bundle of nerves. He does a pretty good job of concealing it and allowing his emotions to remain contained and bottled up. But, you know he is 54 years old at the time. He is rocketing, he goes from Lieutenant Colonel to fivestar general hes going to be promoted to five star in several months in the course of 44 months. It is a six month period between each promotion. It is really unheard of in American Military history. And, you have to say, here is a guy who initially, when he has first taken over the Theater Command in the mediterranean, he has never heard a shot fired in anger. In late 1942. He missed world war i, he was not deployed overseas. But, he has certain traits and care touristics. He is not a particularly good field marshal. He does not see the battle field spatially and temporally like napoleon does. But that is not his job. His primary job is to make decisions and to hold together this fractious, rambunctious coalition and he is brilliant at that. Is absolutely brilliant. Franklin roosevelt says he has made him the commander in chief of the European Expeditionary force as he is the best politician among the generals. Eisenhower does not think that is a slur. He knows that is an important part of this is job. He likes the finish. Unlike, he likes the british amma almost unlike every other general in the american army. He has an affection for them. He began using words like petrol. It drives George Patton insane. So, he is an extraordinary study in leadership and capability and personal growth. You see great responsibility enlarges him. That is something we want in our leaders. Great responsibility enlarges him. So, we are fortunate that he is there at that time. And he is Holding Together this coalition of egos, he has montgomery to deal with, he has patton to deal with, it is almost like being the manager of the yankees were you have this 220 million payroll of egos. And, your goal is to manage them to a world series which in this case was dday. I always found it incredible that he was able to do with all these. We just ran into Susan Eisenhower at a previous event. I said boy, your grandfather really had some problems with montgomery. She said, believe it or not, they were great friends after the war. They really respected each other. So, once world war ii was over, back to what you said about being fond of the english, he was fond of montgomery after the war. Not during the war. Montgomery was a very difficult subordinate. That was a fraud relationship. There were by guns that became come, by guns that begot after the war. Montgomery grows more and more subordinate as we get into that last 11 month period of the war. And if eisenhower had any hair left, he would have been tearing it out. Montgomery was important for the planning of the date. He saw some things that were important for the strategy. So from a strategy standpoint, he was not going to take off on dday, but as far as looking at the overall strategy, he really had a big impact. He did, and of course he is a very experienced combat leader by this point. He is someone who has got the respect of not only the british army, but the entire british nation. That is very important for morale reasons. He sees in eisenhower, despite their frictions, he talks about how eisenhower has a quality that is like a magnet attracting filings of mental. Eisenhower is able to attract the respect and admiration of men the way a magnet attracts mental. So, he is processed of in that respect. You mentioned the First Infantry Division earlier. They had seen action in north africa and other places. Italy, sicily, there was an attempt on dday to give the First Infantry Division that section of omaha beach because the other section went to the 29th and for entry who were the National Guard and they were untested in battle. The First Infantry Division knew what was going to happen within reason or is the 29th, when they landed, they really did not have a feel for combat. How important is it for young soldiers, teenagers, to be thrown into war who feel invincible . You know, it is a complex question, isnt it . You want them to have some sense of what it is they are getting themselves into so they are not shocked. I do not care how much combat you have seen, you land on omaha beach, you have seen saving private ryan, that first 22 minutes gives you a pretty good idea of the intensity of combat occurring there at the time. So, you want them to have some sense of what they are getting into. On the other hand, you do not want them to be paralyzed with anxiety. You know, some part of every 19 yearold believes they are invulnerable, immortal and i think that is a useful trait. The 29th division has been in maryland, virginia, the district of columbia, they are a relatively green unit. They are sidebyside shoulder to shoulder with the First Infantry Division. They have some challenges that the First Division does not have just in terms of veterans and in the ranks. My feeling is that placing them where they were placed, in retrospect, was probably good. Casualties are tremendous to the 29th division. But, i think that you can believe in retrospect that having them at the high level of morale that the division had was one of the keys to success on june 6. When you look at the soldiers and you look at when they land and the kernels are getting killed and the lieutenants are getting killed, it is up to these 17 and 18yearolds to say, okay, my commander is dead what do i do now . I always found that fascinating that it is the mcos who led the men off of omaha beach and it is the corporals and the privates who took the initiative on that day. What does it say about american soldiers and even the allied soldiers, the younger soldiers who saw everything going wrong yet were still able to rally and move inland . It speaks to the importance of training, first and foremost. These guys have spent a lot of time in various training regimens. The Junior Officers, the mcos, the middle level officers had been working with the ranks for quite some time. In the First Division, they had been together since 1942 to the extent that the unit is so cohesive. They have lost men in africa and sicily. There is still some considerable stability. So, part of training, it is true today, it was true in that day, it is to be able to make the necessary adjustments for junior leaders to take the initiative when Senior Leaders are killed or disabled. It is for those who do not necessarily have a formal leadership position to find the leadership in themselves when the moment arrives. That is when it is required. I think you see that, there is a terrible sense of shock as you are seeing the man on your left with a bullet through his four head and demand on your right has been terribly wounded in the guts and trying to overcome that in order to get off the beach, to move forward, to do what you need to do, you know what you need to do. You need to get off the beach. And to be able to figure out how to do it, to lead other men to do that, it is something. Not every soldier is made to lead other men in the dark of night or in this case, relatively early in the morning. And, it is situations like omaha beach where you find those who are able to lead other men in the dark of night, metaphorically. When you look at, we all know we won omaha beach with heavy casualties. Utah was not as bad, obviously. But as we approach the anniversary and you see these guys in the front row, it is really the last time they will be able to go back for a major anniversary, most of them are in their mid90s. The 80th anniversary, they probably will not make it back. You guys are gonna be there. They will be there. Speak and they are going to ride their bike. So when you look at them and you know that there were 16. 1 million americans who served in the war and there are 445,000 left, what is their legacy when you look, when you sit here and look at these guys. What have they left us . They are passing at about the rate of 350 per day. You guys are going to be fine. Speak of your good for 80. But, my father was a world war ii veteran, career army officer, infantry officer, he died at 94 in october. We think about the individual legacy, i think about what my father left for me and my family. Collectively, the legacy, it is incalculable. It is so stupendous. It is really difficult to get your arms around it. One of the things that they leave us is a sense that no matter how difficult our difficulties today seem, they have faced worst and had the gumption and the guts and the wherewithal and the cleverness to overcome it. And, i think that is really important. That is one of the reasons we should know our own history, is one of the reasons for studying history. It can be inspirational, it can be comforting in that regard. The legacy in some cases is very obvious. On the other hand, you want to make sure every 14yearold kid in america knows exactly what these guys did. It is important for those of us who are a little longer in the tube then 14 years old, to ensure that they understand our national history. World war ii, first and foremost, i would say, but all of it. The good and the bad. It is important. It is who we are, it is where we came from. And, we can say for these guys, their generation had to ponder the most difficult question that any people can ask themselves. What are you willing to die for . That is a tough question. That is a question that everyone should be prepared to ask and to answer. What are you willing to die for . We know what they were willing to die for. We know what they died for in some cases. 400,000 american deaths, 291 killed in action. That does not even begin to talk about 11,000 left blind and all the rest. But that is part of the legacy that should outlive them forever. It is important to us. Speak and when we talk to children, go ahead, yes absolutely. [ applause ]. I think you get a sense of that when you travel to europe and you see 12 and 13yearold boys and girls, to these men when they are visiting the cemetery to visit one of their friends and they come up and say thank you and they know all about patton and eisenhower and montgomery and about dday. That is because their countries were liberated by these men. These men are liberating people that they do not know, countries that they have never been to, as teenagers, so that is a pretty magnificent thing when you think about it. The other part of that is, people say they were fighting for america. They were fighting for the flag do you believe they were fighting for their fellow soldier more . Yes, of course they are fighting for the big picture, the big words and so on. But again, since the days of and homer, why did they risk their lives, why did they sometimes give their lives . So that they are not less the, less than the man on their left or the right and today i would say the women on the left and on the right. You do not go to war without the women today. That camaraderie, that intends since of brotherhood that is forged in combat and under the greatest stress that is imaginable in the human condition, that is really at the heart of what they are doing. I agree with you entirely, tim. And you go to normandy for one of these anniversaries, and you see the french, you tend to ridicule the french in this country sometimes and it is really unfortunate and unfair. They have very long memories. They remember what happened on june 6, 1944. As a nation and individually, they are really grateful. You see them come up, kids who were born 50 years after dday and they know the history. They know the sacrifice. They know the relationship between america and france in that case. And, it is true also in other western european countries. I lived in berlin for years. I know that the germans really, despite the fact that we destroyed their country with our allies, they recognize that we liberated them, too. We liberated them from a fascist regime that they had empowered and that had taken control of their country. They permitted it to happen and we allowed the germans, really, i think, to turn into the germany that is so admirable today. This is an important ongoing relationship again, 75 years ago. It is important that 75 years from now and 75 years after that, we know about this important relationship that we built starting on june 6, 1944. Was a trend, was it dday when you look at the defining moments in history and we will talk a lot about that, but where do you rank dday in terms of the world changing in the course of one 24 hour period , and where it ranks in the history of the world . For sheer drama it is tough to top. The war at this point commit that is probably one. Let us not forget that most of the bleeding and the dying that is happening is the bleeding and dying, it is being done by the russians. 26 million dead. Most of the killing of germans is being done by the russians. It is estimated that russian troops, red army troops, killed nine germans for every one killed by british and american soldiers together. So, when we get to june 6, 1944, the handwriting is on the wall. But, if the invasion fails, the war is not going to end in 1945. It is going to drag on and that means many more deaths, not just american deaths, but the deaths of civilians, the deaths of allies, it is awful. Lets remember that in april 1945, the last full month of the war in europe, 11,000 american soldiers were killed in action in germany. Is almost as many as died in june 1944. It was awful virtually to the last gunshot. The longer the war goes on, whether it is because there are mistakes made in prosecuting the campaigns across western europe, or because the invasion has failed and you have to mount another invasion, the more awful it is going to be. So, i think it is a singular date, it is probably not a defining date in the sense of okay, this is the day that the war was won. The history of the war, of the campaign in western europe is more complicated than that. But, boy, it is a date that should be seared in everybodys memory forever. When you look at the planning that went into dday and you look at the maps and you see that every hedgerow was marked out and every stream and railroad and everything was prepared for a successful invasion, and that all goes out the window the minute these guys start to land and everything goes wrong. How were we able to win dday when you look at so many things that went wrong . Smart commanders know that no plan survives contact with the enemy. And there is no difference in this plan. In some cases, things go wrong and it actually works to your advantage. So, you get two pair trapper divisions scattered around the coast. There scattered all over s halfacre. Nobody notices for a couple days. Those are two very confused divisions, but also the german defenders are even more confused. Every time they turn around, there seem to be paratroopers. You cant say that this was better than the plan that i had actually come together as it was drawn up. You know, brute force is an important factor in combat. You get to omaha beach and there are more defenders there than you expect. The defenses are tougher than you have anticipated and casualties are high. And, you know, it is tough on utah, too. Again, heres something that goes wrong and it turns out to go right. They have miscalculated where the division is going to land. Theodore roosevelt junior is there in the first wave. They are about a mile away from where they intend to land because of the current and navigation errors. That turns out to be good because the german defenses there are softer than they would have been where they had intended to land. You mentioned that casualties were less than expected, much less than omaha beach. So sometimes, error or confusion can work to your advantage. When it doesnt work to your advantage, you are just going to mull your way through. He will rely on the kind of courage we talked about, and on the overwhelming force you have brought to bear. Theres a lot that goes wrong, youre right. Theres the soft inning up of the airstrikes. They do not hit where they are supposed to hit, among other things, there are no craters on the beach for men to take shelter in. Sheltering cows. There was a real slaughterhouse of dairy cows further inland. The naval bombardment is fierce but it does not necessarily penetrate thick into the defenses. So what you see i think is necessity is the mother of invention there and this a cd required them to find their way forward and they did. Speak of you speak with hundreds of them and they open up to you rather than opening up to their own families. A lot of times when we do an interview, a son or daughter will stop us on the way out and say we had no idea he won a silver star at omaha beach. We had no idea he did this. We had no idea he did that. Why didnt these guys share these stories with their family . Was it to protect them . Why were they more likely to share it with a perfect stranger like you or me . I think for one thing, it is important not to romanticize. Some of them never shut up after 1945. So, lets not pretend that they were all suffering in silence for all these years. These guys are laughing. There like i hear you. And, it is important for them to have talked about it. It is one of the ways they help to work through the trauma of it. We know very well today what ptsd is. It was not as well diagnosed in the 1940s. So those who talked, good on them. Others did not. My father never talked about vietnam. Could never get a syllable out of him after it. He talked about world war ii, but for some reason, he would not talk about it. That is just the way some soldiers are. They open up to strangers like you and me, first of all i have to admit, i do not rely on 70 yearold memories. No offense, guys. But, i believe that the contemporaneous record, the diaries, the letters they wrote, the official records, its so profoundly is enormous and rich. Some scholars say the u. S. Army records alone for world war ii way 17,000 tons. After action reports . All this stuff, all the papers that military bureaucracies can create. Along with the fabulous record that soldiers, individual soldiers have left behind. The poetry of their letters, of these unlettered soldiers, it is extraordinary. But in some cases, i know you have found this, as the years go by, they want to come a for one thing they have worked through it somehow. They want to be remembered, they want to have somebody record what their experiences were. And that is important. It can be extraordinarily powerful. You can get those little brushstrokes of detail that you get no other way than by hearing the oral history, the story of somebody who is there. We are here because atlanta and georgia have such a rich history in world war ii and just even from band of brothers and everything else, one of the reasons also is because the managing editor of the Atlanta Journalconstitution at the time, took a little leave of absence from the newspaper and became a stringer for nbc, but brian. He happened to file the first radio report on dday. So, he scooped the world. He was an incredible individual and very well known here in the community. Yes, and i would like to tell you a little bit about him if youll indulge me. But brian was the bud brian was credited with being the first news man to report on the dday invasion on june 6. He beat more than 600 reporters on one of the biggest stories of the century. As an old newspapermen myself, i can only imagine the pain of those 600. There were a couple choice words said there by a few people . Yeah, so he received the president ial medal of edom which is the highest civilian award from Dwight D Eisenhower for his service as a war correspondent. We are fortunate tonight to have his daughter here tonight. Thank you for joining us. [ applause ] the bravery of being a correspondent at that time, and these, youre looking at the faces of these paratroopers who were petrified, you have to get that report, you have to as journalists. Your job is to sum up the moment and he did that so well. We have used his radio broadcast in a couple of our films and it is so dramatic. It is so in the field because it is not one of those today where is is digitized and they have been able to eliminate all the noise and everything going around and it is a rough broadcast. But it was also a rough time. We had an opportunity to listen to that broadcast right now. Lets cue that up and listen to this dramatic podcast. This is brian speaking from london. In the first hour of dday , a little more than an hour before dday began by greenwich mean time, the first spearhead of forces for the liberation of europe ended by parachute in northern france. The netting, the flight deck of the sea 47, a road across the English Channel with the first trip. Just before we left for the return trip to england, i watched from the rear plane named the snooty, as 17 american paratroopers led by a Lieutenant Colonel jumped with their arms, ammunition and equipment onto german occupied fans, friends. Our group from the carrier command was met with only scattering small arms fire from the fields which were dark and quiet as we headed into enemy territory. As we headed back toward the english coast, we saw tracers arching through the air behind us. A steady parade of the last airplanes moving out for the course we had just navigated to strengthen the Ground Forces we had left hello. In the channel below as we could see a few ships but could not be sudden whether they were part of the armada carrying the last of those to the beaches. You could just hear it in his voice. But he was such a professional that has voices steady. He is describing what he sees and that is the mark of any good journalist wherever they are. You spend a lot of time at the post and you do that now, as well. It is incredible he is able to be so calm in a crazy situation like that. I would only add, that is an extraordinary dispatch he sends. He has successors who are reporting today, not quite as dramatic, risking their lives and in some places giving their lives. They are not the enemies of the people. Please remember that. [ applause ]. I was taken by the Atlanta Journalconstitution staff listening to their bus give this broadcast. They were all just going crazy saying that is our boss, delivering the first broadcast of dday. It is such an incredible thing. We are honored tonight to hear the current editor. Kevin, if you could stand. Kevin is over there. That tradition lives on from Edward R Murrow right on down through Walter Cronkite and lester holt and everybody else. Journalists report what the sea. And what they find out. Being a former journalist, i have always been one of those people that believed your held to that standard. No matter what you do you stick to that standard. So, we had some questions from the audience that they wrote out and would like to ask you. The first one is, what is your credit card number and Expiration Date . Just kidding. Dutch coda is considered the hero of omaha beach. A monument was once proposed. Was his leadership considered less than that of Teddy Roosevelt juniors bravery on utah beach . Was his leadership worthy of a metal honor, medal of honor consideration . Lets start, why did Teddy Roosevelt who was awarded the medal of honor, why was his leadership, why did it over shadow dutch coda . They landed on the wrong beach, in the wrong place. Roosevelt who is with them, by this point, his really long in the tooth for a combat leader. He has been in north africa, he has been in sicily, he has quite a lot of combat experience. And, he takes command over the scene. He improvises and he rallies the men and says okay, we may be in the wrong place but we are going this way. We are going inland here. It is a performance by him and his famously walking around. He has a limp and he has his cane and he is using his cane as a sword. It is extraordinary. He has a heart attack about a month later and dies in normandy. Tragically. And, he is awarded the medal of honor in part for his collective service to the country. But specifically for what he had done on june 6 and the days after. Coda is one of the most interesting of the general officers in the war. On omaha beach, you talked about how Junior Officers and mcos helped to rally to get them up it is coda who is really leading the way. He is waving his 45 and he has a cigar clamped between his teeth and he is getting them off the beaches and is showing them, we are going this way, up the bluff this way. It is an extraordinary active combat leadership when coda is up on the bluffs finally and the word gets out to omar bradley on the ships. He is so anxious at this point, things are so got, going so badly that he is thinking of pulling the troops off which is really hard and perhaps redirecting them to utah beach. When he gets word that coda is up above the beach, he knows that things are going to be okay. He leads, he becomes commander of the 28th Infantry Division, partly as a reward for his actions on june 6, the 28th Infantry Division has been the pennsylvania National Guard. They are given the honor of leading the parade, the victory parade through paris. That is when paris is liberated in late august 1944. They are on a postage stamp, these ranks of men. His writing hi and then he gets into the harkin forest. One of the most poorly conceived battles of all world war ii in november 1944. Codas division is chewed to pieces. His with an ancient whisker of being relieved of command, the main reason they dont is because so many potential replacements have been wounded or killed. And so, to me, coda shows the fickleness. Life turns on a dime. We all know that but in his case, he goes from being hero to zero. Just like that. There is a famous picture of eisenhower confronting coda during the harkin forest. A very skeptical face, expression on eisenhowers face. And coda trying to explain this calamity that is unfolding. So he is as complex as accomplished actors go. He is a great when. And there are other guys that people may not have heard about like George Taylor on omaha beach and theres actually a trivia question, theres only one world war i veteran buried at the American Cemetery in normandy. A lot of people do not know the answer to that is. That is Teddy Roosevelt juniors brother. It is him. He was moved. The second question is, we all know about the involvement of animals, particularly horses and mules, especially in italy, in world war ii, due to the movie world, movie, warhorse. Whether any animals involved in dday and before you answer this, i have to tell you a quick story about a paratrooper who landed and had a conversation with a cow. He said that cow came