A richly textured discussion of the Normandy landing on the eve of its 50th anniversary. One sample: WFB: "I should like to begin by asking Mr. Home, assuming such an operation as Overlord were undertaken today, would modern cultural circumstances rule it out?" AH: "I think they would have made it extremely unlikely, extremely improbable. Just take a remark made by General Bradley at midday on the 6th of June--this was after the invasion had been going for less than 12 hours--and he said, 'I think we have an irreversible disaster on our hands,' given the appalling carnage on Omaha Beach. ... I think today you would have had CNN on the beaches, and I doubt if it would have been acceptable to have had a D-Day plus 2. Now ... I met Norman Schwarzkopf and I asked him after [the Gulf War] what his biggest problem was, and he said it was quite simply the media ..." NH: "Monty was a great optimist and he believed that it was his task as a great military leader--which is how he saw himself--to inspire the people around him. So he would never allow his mask to drop. I think it's true to say that if Monty had not been appointed to command the American and British and Canadian armies at D-Day, D-Day would have failed."