We've all seen the pictures. Off-shore under a leaden sky, LSTs with gaping doors disgorge tanks and trucks against the shadowy backdrop of prowling battleships.
Small craft scuttle to and fro among destroyers and minesweepers.
Barrage balloons hover over lines of men and vehicles snaking among mounds of materiel as they make their way up the littered slopes of the frowning escarpment. The Normandy invasion has been called, with little exaggeration, the most monumental military undertaking ever attempted. Thousands of vehicles, tens of thousands of men, millions of tons of supplies, all assembled, loaded, transported, and unloaded in a sequence choreographed as precisely as a ballet, though in infinitely more difficult circumstances. And as we now know, it barely succeeded. Within months of the invasion, Allied armies were brought virtually to a halt by the logistical crisis produced by their expanding operations.