D-Day anniversary: How Arthur Page put troops in fighting mood for Normandy Invasion

June 6 is the 60th anniversary of the Normandy Invasion of June 6, 1944. Arthur W. Page played a key role in preparing troops for the invasion. During World War II, Page headed the Joint Army and Navy Committee on Welfare and Recreation which oversaw troop information including the "Stars and Stripes" newspaper, "Yank" magazine and the Army News Service. Noel Griese’s biography of Page was recently selected as one of the 38 best books ever written on public relations. Griese is available for interviews on the Normandy Invasion.

(PRWEB) May 19, 2004 -- In the spring of 1944, three and a half million men in arms were being prepared in the south of England for Operation Overlord, the planned Allied invasion of the European mainland.

Shortly after midnight on June 6, 20,000 men of the U.S. 82nd and 101st and British 6th Airborne divisions began landing well behind German lines. They went to their destinations in 1,200 transport aircraft and 700 gliders. The American airborne forces were charged with taking and holding key roads in the enemy rear lines so that reinforcements could not be brought to bear on Utah and Omaha beaches during the invasion landings.

At 6:31 a.m. on June 6, an invasion armada of 5,000 ships began unloading the first contingent of 176,000 men on the beaches of Normandy. Fighting men, support troops and materiel were poured into the foothold established. Some 2,400 Americans died in the initial invasion, and thousands more were injured.

In July, one British, one Canadian and two American columns broke out of the Cherbourg Peninsula, beginning an offensive that would end, after the setback of the Battle of the Bulge, in the collapse of Germany.

The American forces that participated in Overlord had to be mentally prepared. On April 5, 1944, Arthur W. Page departed for England on a secret 100-day mission for Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson. His main assignment, according to Noel L. Griese, author of the definitive biography of Page, was to oversee indoctrination of American forces.

Col. Oscar N. Solbert, chief of morale and special services for the European Theater of Operations, had overall responsibility for troop information, education and morale. Page was sent to assist him, particularly with getting troop commanders to cooperate in information and education efforts.

As he had in World War I, when he served on John “Black Jack” Pershing’s staff, Page declined a commission in World War II. He went to England as a civilian, with the assimilated rank of colonel, knowing he would be better able to work with Solbert if he neither outranked nor underranked him. He stayed in Europe for more than three months, through D-Day and long enough after to make a visit to Cherbourg on the continent.

Page helped Col. Solbert and his staff coordinate troop information through the "Stars and Stripes" newspaper, "Yank" magazine, daily broadcasts of the Army News Service (ANS), Army films and newsreels and troop information meetings. He prepared schedules of what was to be said to soldiers each week, sat in on military staff meetings as emissary of the secretary of war and wrote the statement to be given to soldiers as they embarked for the Normandy beaches.

Page in 1926 had left his vice presidency at the publishing house of Doubleday, Page & Co. to become the public relations vice president of AT&T, then America’s largest corporation. There he had emphasized face-to-face supervisor-employee communication. For the Normandy Invasion, he stressed to Solbert and invasion force commanders the importance of Army officers discussing face to face with the troops they commanded the messages appearing in "Stars and Stripes" and other Army media. Page and Solbert oversaw preparation of orientation materials issued to commanders with orders that they cover the topics with enlisted men.

In remarks to AT&T’s Information Department after returning from England, Page explained what he had done: "We spend considerable time and effort (at AT&T) trying to persuade the people in the Bell System—in print and otherwise—to be courteous and polite… This was the same process in the Army in exactly the opposite direction. The job there was to persuade the men in the Army to be anything but polite to the Germans," he said.

"Now, the method was to have a pamphlet for discussion by the officers with all the men once a week, an inset in the daily paper once a week, a radio program which gave the same picture over the radio once a week, plus plugs all through the week and occasionally 'Yank,' the Army weekly magazine, would help out when it could. All of that was directed so that if the fellows missed it at one count they got it on the rebound somewhere else.

"…(W)e took things Hitler had said and explained them in G.I. language… We had men from the First Division tell their experiences in Italy—all translated into G.I. language. There were some generals who did not like it but actually it had an effect on the men. I was very much surprised because as you know, in our work here it takes a long time to get an idea to percolate. This was very different. When the marshalling area was closed off… from contact with everything outside, two things happened—attendance at church went up 300%, and attention to what was printed went up about the same…."

From D-Day forward, the troop orientation job became one of keeping soldiers informed, particularly on the lessons being learned in combat. 'Stars and Stripes' became the main vehicle for rapidly informing troops of combat lessons. For the first few days after the beachhead was established, the staff continued to print the paper in London, with copies shipped to France. Soon after the invasion, however, the staff moved to the Cherbourg foothold on the continent, where firsthand information was more readily available, and began printing a continental edition of the newspaper there.

Page recognized the effectiveness of combat information printed in "Stars and Stripes." “After the first three or four days of the invasion the Germans tried the same old ‘white flag’ trick and offered to surrender, but when our men went up to get them they were shot down,” he related to AT&T employees. “The men wounded in that were interviewed and it was printed in the paper. About four days later a G2 officer asked if we would not please write how to take prisoners safely. They… had not taken any in the last few days.”

While in London, Page developed a liking for Maj. Arthur Goodfriend, who wrote for "Stars and Stripes" and handled other troop information duties. Goodfriend, in later life a controversial employee of the U.S. Information Service, and author of "The Twisted Image," a book critical of USIS programs in India, earned Page’s respect because he kept up-to-date on GI vernacular by periodically donning a private’s uniform and slipping into combat units with replacements.

Soon after D-Day, Page made a brief trip to the Cherbourg peninsula before returning home to work in the Pentagon on the announcement of the atomic bomb. At Cherbourg he liberated a bottle of French brandy that he never got to enjoy. He left the bottle in a suitcase in a railroad locker in New York while he went on to Washington to report to Secretary of War Stimson on what he had seen and heard in England and France. When he was finally able to reclaim the suitcase, he found the bottle had exploded, ruining both the vintage and his clothes.

"Arthur W. Page, Publisher, Public Relations Pioneer, Patriot" by Noel L. Griese is published by Anvil Publishers, Atlanta, 2003. 428 pp. casebound, US$24.95.