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SYKES ADVERTISING, INC.
General Advising Agency

617 WILLIAM PENN PLACE, PITTSBURGH 19, PA. GRANT 1-6120

April 17, 1958

Miss Frances Ward
Readers Digest
230 Park Avenue
New York, New York

Subject: "D" Day story for June '59

Dear Miss Ward:

At present I am the Executive Officer of an Infantry Regiment in
the U. S. Army Active Reserve. Through channels from the Department
of the Army, I have been advised that you are interested in collecting
information from individuals who participated in the Invasion of Nor-
mandy, June 6, 1944.

On that day I was serving as tactical aide-de-camp to (then) Major
General L. T. Gerow, commanding V Corps - the unit in charge of operations
on Omaha Beach. My job was to act as an extra pair of "eyes and ears"
for the General in order to give him a first hand report of what was go-
ing on. I landed on "Easy Red" beach that afternoon under somewhat try-
ing circumstances.

Just a week earlier, I had been a glider infantry company commander
attached to the 101st Airborne Division.

After V-E Day, when our unit had been transferred back to the U. S.
and I had progressed to Assistant G-2 of V Corps, I was given the task
of writing a brief history of our operations from Normandy to Czechoslo-
vakia. For this reason, I was given one of several surviving copies of
the Operational Plan NEPTUNE, the complete plan for the Invasion - as
far as Omaha Beach was concerned. Formerly TOP SECRET, it had been down-
graded to RESTRICTED, and I kept it as a very interesting souvenir after
I was separated from active duty in 1945.

On the tenth anniversary of "D Day”, a reporter from the Pittsburgh
Press interviewed me and wrote the enclosed story. Although it contains

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