Ike spent the night before invasion visiting the U.S. 101st Airborne Division. He wrote in his Crusade in Europe,
“I found the men in fine fettle, many of them joshingly admonishing me that I had no cause for worry, since the 101st was on the job and everything would be taken care of in fine shape. I stayed with them until the last of them were in the air, somewhere about midnight.”
Kay Summersby drove Ike for this trip (I once wrote an article of “What’s in a name? Telek, Ike’s dog; what’s a dog got to do with love?” but in the spirit of talking war, not love, let’s put the “love story”—as Kay claimed in her “Past Forgetting”—in back burner) and Ike confided to her, “I hope to God I know what I am doing.” and “It’s very hard really to look a soldier in the eye when you fear that you are sending him to his death.” After seeing hundreds of planes taking off, Ike said, “Well, It’s on. No one can stop it now.” There were tears in his eyes, according to Kay.
