D-Day USA
In the early hours of Tuesday, June 6, 1944, in New York City's Times Square, a group of cab drivers, a cop on the beat, and some servicemen hunched around a Yellow cab's open door listening to the radio reports. Above their heads the world famous electric message board of the New York Times Tower flashed the news; letter by letter the good news wrapped around the building for all to see -- INVASION.
The night owls of the east coast's graveyard shift were the first to hear the news of the long awaited and greatly anticipated Invasion of Hitler's Fortress Europe. The German Transocean News Agency reported the Allied invasion first and American news services and radio stations began reporting the German report at 12:53 a.m. eastern war time. Most listeners, war weary after two and one-half years of conflict, waited for War Department confirmation, but they smiled just the same; if the invasion succeeded, the last stage of the European war was at hand.
In Washington D.C., President Roosevelt told his wife Eleanor about the invasion earlier in the evening; then he went to bed hoping to grab a few hours sleep before the whole world learned of the invasion. The First Lady could not sleep; therefore, when army Chief of Staff George C. Marshall called the president at 3 a.m. the White House operator connected the call to Mrs. Roosevelt. The First Lady went in and awakened her husband. "He sat up in bed and put on his sweater, and from then on he was on the phone." The president called his White House staff and ordered them to report for duty immediately.
At 3:32 eastern war time, the War Department made the official announcement and read General Eisenhower's order of the day: "Soldiers, Sailors, and Airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Force! You are about to embark on the great crusade.... The tide has turned!... We will accept nothing less than full victory."
In New York, following the official announcement, Mayor Fiorello La Guardia went on the radio at 3:40 a.m. He told his audience that the Invasion Day mass ceremony, planned a month previously, would be held in Madison Square, site of the eternal flame honoring World War I soldiers. The mayor told reporters, "This is the most exciting moment of our lives."
In San Francisco, the first bulletins blared from radios a few hours before midnight Pacific war time catching most people before they went to bed. The next morning many people rose earlier than usual to attend an early mass or stop at a church or a synagogue to pray. The Grace Cathedral carillon played the opening notes of Beethoven's
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