Seventh Army

The destruction of Panzer Armee Afrika left the United Kingdom Eighth Army and the American Seventh Army without a mission.

Early in the war Soviet Premier Josef Stalin, faced with grievous losses in the great encirclements of 1941, was agitating for a second front in continental Europe. The war in North Africa was not enough.

The Normandy Breakout had smashed the German Seventh Army, and the Allies advanced on Paris.

At 12:05 AM on June 6, 1944, three gliders carrying an element of the British 6th Airborne Division silently cut loose form the their tow planes and drifted towards the Pegasus Bridge, one of the few bridges that led over the Seine towards Normandy.