The first thing that happened to the tens of thousands of Allied troops headed for Normandy half a century ago was that they didn't go.

The soldiers, crammed into steel-hulled invasion craft of all sizes, set off from the coast of England on June 4. The first waves of American, British and Canadian troops were supposed to cross the English Channel under darkness and hit the Normandy beaches at low tide early June 5.

But even before many vessels got out of sight of land, the notoriously fickle Channel weather turned vile, forcing the largest naval armada ever assembled back to port.

More than a year in the planning, D-Day had been postponed.

To make matters worse, the last meal many of the men had eaten before they boarded the ships was a recipe for seasickness.

"We drew British rations -- mainly mutton and pork, and it was very greasy," remembers John "Sam" Allsup, at the time a 22-year-old rifle platoon lieutenant with the 29th Division's Baltimore-based 175th Infantry.

"The guys were sick, and there was [a mess] on the deck down below," he says. "Some of the guys were so sick they couldn't get out of their hammocks."

On the shoulders of this sickly force hung the salvation of Europe.

Sgt. Edward Ringgold Elburn, an Eastern Shore native and a medic with the 29th's 115th Infantry, was on troop ship No. 553 as it pitched and rolled in the churning Channel waters waters off Plymouth, England, while the Allied commanders reconsidered the weather from their headquarters in the sleepy environs outside Portsmouth.

By the time the real "go" order came the next day, Sergeant Elburn and 200 other men had been aboard the landing barge a full day -- waiting.

Supreme Allied Commander Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower's invasion-eve message was lofty: "The eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you."

Sergeant Elburn had more mundane matters on his mind. He swallowed his seasickness pills and climbed onto his bunk, praying he would not have to use the bag he held to his chest.

"It was quiet," remembers Mr. Elburn, who is 76 and lives in Queen Anne's County.

"You just laid there with your own thoughts. You thought about your family at home, and you didn't want to get sick because you figured if you got onto that beach not sick, you had a better chance of making it."

How to make it was what the drill instructors had pushed in every way for the last year as they pushed the 29ers through grueling exercises on the British moors and beaches, trying to prepare them for survival on the Normandy beaches, over the cliffs manned by German gunners, and in the farm fields and hedgerows beyond.

The 29th, the mobilized Blue and Gray Division of National Guardsmen from Maryland and Virginia, had been tapped for a landing at one of the five designated beaches along the bowl-shaped Normandy coast between Cherbourg and Le Havre.

Overlord revealed

A few days before the invasion, Lieutenant Allsup joined other officers inside a tent where they were shown a detailed sand model of the Normandy coast. American troops would hit the westernmost beach while the British and Canadians would come ashore on the eastern end.

Somewhere between the two cusps, the combined forces of the 29th and the U.S. 1st Division would land on a 5-mile stretch of sand and smooth rocks.

For the first time, top-secret code names for the invasion and the landing sites were disclosed to the troops.

"They said they called it Omaha Beach and the whole operation was called Overlord," says Mr. Allsup. "We said 'What the hell does that mean?' We didn't know much at all."

Invasion details had been wrapped in extraordinary secrecy, restricted until the last minute to the top echelon of Allied military planners and their staffs. The insiders were called the "Bigots," a code name for the hierarchy of American and British officers and a few Canadian and French commanders.

A week before the scheduled D-Day, activity within the Bigots' secret offices around London rose to a fever pitch, remembers Mabel Carney Stover, then a 26-year-old U.S. Women's Army Corps sergeant assigned as a secretary to the Allied Expeditionary Air Force headquarters.

"Security got very tight," says Mrs. Stover, who lives in Ruidoso, N.M., with her husband but spends the spring and summer at her daughter's home in Howard County. "People had grim looks on their faces. Everybody was talking in whispers, and there wasn't any visible joy on their faces. We knew thousands would die on that first day."

'You'll get killed'

Sergeant Carney was particularly worried about her boss, Col. Ralph "Baz" Bagby.

Colonel Bagby's office was working with British officers on plans for the combined American and British paratrooper and glider assault behind enemy lines.

The aerial portion of Operation Overlord was considered so risky that some British commanders recommended scrapping it.

But Colonel Bagby, a World War I veteran who had re-enlisted in the U.S. Army, not only supported the plan, but he had also decided to jump into France with the U.S. 82nd Airborne Division.

"You can't do that," Sergeant Carney told her 53-year-old boss. "You'll get killed."

Her pleas ignored, Sergeant Carney gave the colonel candy and cigarettes and watched him leave the office for a nearby airfield.

He came back two days later with some of the first eyewitness accounts of the aerial landing.

One of the many uncertainties confronting the planners of D-Day was how the men of Maryland/Virginia's 29th Division would perform. Top commanders were impressed by the men, but they were untested in battle.

Their commander, Maj. Gen. Charles Gerhardt, was a stickler for details.

Out of earshot, 29ers called him "Uncle Charlie."

But the nickname was misleading. He ruled the men with an iron fist. One of his favorite regulations was that anyone caught wearing his helmet with the chin strap unfastened would be punished.

Lieutenant Allsup, who had enlisted in the National Guard four years earlier in his native Illinois, had requested overseas duty and been transferred to the 29th. His last barracks in the United States was the 29ers' home base at Fort Meade. "We called it Fort Mud," he says. "The mud was up to our ankles."

Other Army men derided the 29th as "a bunch of Boy Scouts" because of the commander's by-the-books discipline. But Mr. Allsup says that when he met the 41 men in his rifle platoon, he was impressed. "I found them able and agreeable."

As D-Day approached, security intensified and orders came down to step up physical training. "Keep them busy," Lieutenant Allsup was advised. "Don't give them time to think about home. They might be worried about going into combat."

The troops got up early and, carrying weapons and full backpacks, moved out in formation for long "speed marches." Then it was back to camp for breakfast. Afterward, they would practice fighting with bayonets on the beach.

Since late May, troops had been confined to assembly areas or "bull pens" along the coast. They were under orders not to talk to British civilians. Mail service coming in and going out was suspended. Liquor was forbidden. "Believe me," says Mr. Allsup, "some of the men wanted a drink."

A couple of days before the assault, Lieutenant Allsup caught one of his men chatting with an Englishman who had walked down to the stockade.

"I could have had him court-martialed," he recalls. "I didn't, though. It was an innocent conversation, and I let it pass."

Troops segregated

Most soldiers still knew few details of the impending invasion, but there was no doubt about why they had been gathered along the coast. Black soldiers in transportation units had driven Troops segregated

Most soldiers still knew few details of the impending invasion, but there was no doubt about why they had been gathered along the coast. Black soldiers in transportation units had driven Sergeant Elburn's company to its staging area, singing "We're going down to the shore and we're coming back. You're going down to the shore and you're not coming back," he says.

The U.S. military was still segregated, and black troops, assigned mostly as support personnel, stayed in separate camps while in England. Although many blacks landed in France in the days and weeks following June 6, their participation in the D-Day invasion was limited to specialized outfits such as the Army's 320th Barrage Balloon Battalion.

The large balloons were attached by cable to most of the larger invasion vessels at the shore to prevent enemy planes from descending close enough to strafe. Riding high off the ships' sterns, the balloons served as aerial guards as the armada plowed across the channel.

With more than 1.5 million soldiers crowded onto the launching beaches of England along with the weight of all their equipment, the joke went that the balloons were there to keep the island from sinking.

For many GIs on the landing crafts, the trip across the Channel meant parting from British hosts they had come to know and love. Civilians in the coastal towns had opened their doors to the Yanks and, in many cases, treated them as family.

Sgt. Waverly B. Woodson Jr., a black medic with the 320th, was particularly sorry to leave. The British treated him and other black troops with a graciousness he says he was not used to back home.

"They had us over for afternoon tea and invited us to their dances," he says. "We got to know the English pretty well, and even some of the white boys came to us when they wanted to know where they could find the local girls."

'We may make it'

Early on June 4 -- the day of the false start -- troops were alerted suddenly to get their gear together. They were issued plastic sheaths to protect their M-1 rifles from salt water and a stipend of invasion scrip -- 200 freshly printed French francs.

Some of the men weren't sure when the French money would come in handy. Sergeant Elburn, told he would likely be on furlough in London in a few days once the beachhead were secured, packed his dress uniform tie and garrison cap.

In the Channel off Weymouth, Sergeant Woodson was aboard a landing craft packed with men, Jeeps, a tank and a medical van. Behind him lay the vast fleet of ships carrying the bulk of the assault force.

In the darkness ahead smaller vessels ferried demolition experts whose precarious job was to clear the beach of obstructions. And not far from them were U.S. Rangers, troops specially trained to scale the 100-foot promontory called Pointe du Hoc on the far right end of Omaha.

The landing barge was open, and some of the men had taken refuge inside the vehicles from a light rain. The few not wide awake nodded off into a fragile sleep. But when the rain stopped, the air was filled with the sound of aircraft. Bombers and fighters and C-47s towing gliders filled with paratroopers -- the spearhead of Operation Overlord -- roared overhead.

H-Hour of D-Day was at hand.

Nobody on Sergeant Woodson's vessel was talking much. Many were still too seasick to utter a word. Mostly, men were absorbed in their private thoughts.

"We may make it. We may not," Mr. Woodson, now 71 and living in Montgomery County's quiet town of Clarksburg, remembers thinking. "You were hoping you could get to shore.

"You were wishing you were back in the States."

THE D-DAY SERIES

The Sun's coverage of the 50th Anniversary of D-Day continues today with the experiences of the American troops as they awaited D-Day and continues tomorrow with their exploits at Normandy, especially the Maryland/Virginia 29th Division fighters.

TODAY: THE AWFUL WAIT

SUNDAY: D-DAY BEGINS

MONDAY: VETS REVISIT FRANCE

, TUESDAY: CLINTON AT NORMANDY