Eisenhower wrote his defeat before giving the order

Dwight Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of the Allied forces, wrote out by hand on 5 June 1944 the statement he would have released if the Normandy landings failed, and put it in his wallet before giving the order to sail.

Cherbourg and Le Havre are two ports on the north coast of France, and the beaches lie between them.

The note reads:

"Our landings in the Cherbourg-Havre area have failed to gain a satisfactory foothold and I have withdrawn the troops. My decision to attack at this time and place was based upon the best information available. The troops, the air and the Navy did all that bravery and devotion to duty could do. If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt it is mine alone."

A foothold is the stretch of enemy coast you manage to take and hold long enough to land the men coming behind you through it. Without that, the whole operation turns into a retreat by sea under fire.

A hundred and fifty thousand men were to cross the Channel in the hours that followed, as many people as live in Oxford. Eisenhower had already postponed the operation by twenty-four hours because of the storm, and he was deciding on the strength of a forecast that gave him a short, doubtful window. In those hours he sat down and wrote the worst possible outcome, finished and in the past tense.

You too have written the message you then did not send. His was written before he knew how it ended.

At the foot of the page, the note ended up dated "July 5", a month ahead of the night it was written on. The US National Archives, which holds it, calls that the only apparent hint of nerves on the paper.

The landings worked. The note was not needed, and it could have vanished that same week into any wastepaper basket in Portsmouth. It did not vanish because Eisenhower folded it, put it in his wallet, and there it stayed for five weeks. On 11 July, emptying out the wallet, he came across it again and showed it to his naval aide, Captain Harry Butcher, who asked if he could keep it. That is why it exists.

Before any of that, on the evening of 5 June, with the sheet already folded in his pocket, Eisenhower went out to Greenham Common airfield, near Newbury, to see off the paratroopers of the 101st Airborne Division. He arrived at about eight o'clock and stayed until the last aircraft took off, close to midnight.