This column is the first of three D-Day columns written by war correspondent Ernie Pyle describing the Allied invasion of Normandy. 

In May 1944, the Western Allies were finally prepared to deliver their greatest blow of the war, the long-delayed, cross-channel invasion of northern France, code-named Overlord.

On June 5, 13,400 American paratroopers boarded C-47 aircraft for the largest airborne operation in history. Problems began as they crossed into France. 

On June 6, 1944, President Franklin Roosevelt's usual "fireside chat" would be replaced with a joint prayer with the American people. 

While the Overlord operation was a combined effort of land, sea, and air forces, the amphibious assault plan was given the code name Neptune.

Planning the Overlord assault didn’t just happen overnight. It was a result of a prewar doctrinal framework built upon six identified components for an amphibious assault.

In the June 7, 1944, edition of her newspaper column My Day, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt reflected on the news of the D-Day landings in Normandy and the long path ahead to victory in Europe.

This column is the last of three D-Day columns written by war correspondent Ernie Pyle describing the Allied invasion of Normandy. 

Despite their early agreement on a strategy focused on defeating “Germany First,” the US and British Allies engaged in a lengthy and divisive debate over how exactly to conduct this strategy before they finally settled on a plan for Operation Overlord, the D-Day invasion of Normandy.

The British landing area lay between Port-en-Bessin and Ouistreham where they would link up with 6th British Airborne Division along the Orne River, after their landing to protect the eastern flank of the Allied lodgment.  

This column is the second of three D-Day columns written by war correspondent Ernie Pyle describing the Allied invasion of Normandy. 

If the US and its western Allies wanted to win this war as rapidly as possible, they couldn’t sit around and wait: not for a naval blockade, or for strategic bombing to work, or for the Soviets.