A prep course for the month-long World Cup soccer tournament, a worldwide pheno

pay gap data is flawed . President Clinton 's budget calls for a 1.6 percent rai

se instead of the 2.6 percent national adjustment provided by law . Congress , l

ed by the bipartisan congressional civil service caucus , the Federal Government

 Service Task Force , is pushing for both a local and national raise next year .

 The national raise would benefit all white collar feds , the smaller locality r

aise would cover most special rate employees .

 ` WE ' LL START THE WAR HERE ' At 6:30 a.m. , the 4th Division infantry hit Uta

h Beach , on the west flank of the invasion . Gen. Theodore Roosevelt , 56 , who

se father had been the 26th president of the United States , was in the first bo

at . The division commander had been reluctant to bring him ; it was Roosevelt '

s fourth assault landing , his heart was bad and he walked with a cane . But he 

was well-known and well-liked by the men for his trademark .45-caliber pistol , 

his enthusiasm and his voice , which was a few decibels louder than the bellow o

f a rutting elk . He was not supposed to have gone in first . The plan was for 3

2 amphibious tanks to launch , swim to the sand and clear the way . But they wer

e late . Higgins boats carried E Company of the 2nd Battalion of the 8th Infantr

y Regiment past the tanks in the water , and the men of E Company landed first .

 Roosevelt was with them , and it was a good thing . Because of wind , waves , t

ide , smoke and the loss of all but one control craft to mines , everyone landed

 out of sequence and in the wrong place . The men stormed a seawall and climbed 

to the top of some dunes . What they saw looked like nothing in their briefings 

. Roosevelt strode up , wearing a wool-knit hat . The general hated helmets . He

 ignored fire from German trenches in the dunes . Leaning on his cane , he studi

ed the company commander 's maps . By now two tanks had landed . German 88-milli

meter guns were pounding the beach , and the tanks had begun firing back . Cane 

in hand , Roosevelt walked back through the fire , ducked into a shell hole behi

nd the tanks and told Col. James Van Fleet , commander of the 8th Regiment , tha

t his men were a mile south of where they should have been . They faced a crucia

l decision . Should they try to shift more than a mile to the north and follow t

heir original orders ? Or should they attack where they were ? Some men say Roos

evelt declared : `` We 'll start the war from right here ! '' It made him a lege

nd . But , in an unpublished memoir , quoted by historian Stephen E. Ambrose , V

an Fleet says that , in fact , he was the one who decided . ` ` ` Go straight ah

ead , ' I ordered . ` We 've caught the enemy at a weak point , so let 's take a

dvantage of it. ' ' ' It matters little , Ambrose says , who decided or what was

 spoken . Far more important , he says , is that the decision was made without o

pposition or time-wasting argument and that it was right . The decision and how 

it came to be made , he says , demonstrated the flexibility and initiative that 

were so distinctive of the American command . Engineers and demolition teams fol

lowed the first wave . They set their charges around Rommel 's obstacles . Withi

n an hour , Ambrose says , the demolition teams had cleared eight 50-yard gaps i

n Rommel 's beach obstacles . More Higgins boats arrived . The boats unloaded mo

re infantry , and the demolition teams on the sand were forced forward . They ra

n into Bouncing Bettys , mines that jumped and exploded groin-high . Still more 

tanks arrived . They rolled through openings in the seawall and drove along a be

ach road that turned inland toward Pouppeville . As reserves began piling up on 

the sand , the 4th Division advanced onto the fields behind it . ( Begin optiona

l trim ) The men turned a farmhouse into a medical aid station . They put two wo

unded Germans in one room and three wounded Americans in another . One was a red

-headed captain named Tom Neely . He had been hit in the stomach by machine-gun 

fire , triggered accidentally by an American soldier . The Rev. William Boice , 

27 , a Protestant chaplain , spent the night trying to comfort Neely , who told 

him about his wife and his 6-year-old son . `` Why me , chaplain ? '' Neely aske

d . Boice had no good answer . At 3 a.m. , Neely died . Boice prayed for him . H

e prayed for the other Americans , and he prayed for the Germans . ( End optiona

l trim ) By the end of the day , the Americans had put more than 20,000 troops a

nd 1,700 vehicles ashore at Utah Beach . It had fallen to the Allies . -0- ( Beg

in optional trim ) ASSAULT ON POINTE-DU-HOC Between Utah Beach on the west flank

 and Omaha Beach in the center of the invasion stood a promontory on a cliff . T

he French called it Pointe-du-Hoc . On this promontory , intelligence agents sai

d , were massive German fortifications and a battery of 155-millimeter cannons l

arge enough to deliver unspeakable horror to both beaches . Allied ships bombard

ed Pointe-du-Hoc , Ambrose says , with 10 kilotons of explosives , cumulatively 

equal to the destructive force of the atomic bomb at Hiroshima . But the gun emp

lacement still stood . An elite American force , the Army Rangers , went to sile

nce the guns . They were led by Lt. Col. James Rudder , 34 , whose landing craft

 was steered in the wrong direction by a British coxswain . Rudder turned it , b

ut the error cost his flotilla 30 to 40 minutes and gave the Germans at Pointe-d

u-Hoc time to rally . They fired mortars and machine guns as the Rangers approac

hed . The U.S. destroyer Satterlee and the Royal Navy 's destroyer Talybont shot

 back , but the Germans on the high ground hardly winced . From their boats , th

e Rangers fired rockets carrying grappling hooks to the top of the cliff . Some 

of the hooks had plain , inch-thick ropes attached . Others had toggle ropes , w

ith wooden rungs tied every two feet . Still others were fastened to rope ladder

s . Machine-gun bullets from the cliff hit scores of men , including 1st Sgt. Le

onard Lomell , 24 . As his boat beached and he jumped into the water , a volley 

tore through the muscle on his right side . It spun him partway around . The bul

lets burned . `` I 've got to get up there , '' he said to himself . `` I 've go

t to get those guns . '' Bleeding , he stumbled through shell and bomb craters t

o the water 's edge . The cliff was 100 feet high , on the far side of a 30-foot

 shingle of rocks . Some were small , others the size of pumpkins . The shingle 

began at the water 's edge . There was little sand . Under the cliff was a pile 

of wet clay . It had fallen from shell craters during the bombardment . To 1st S

gt. James Eikner , 30 , the face of the cliff looked like the face of the moon .

 Eikner knew that the quickest way to get away from machine-gun fire was to char

ge . With a load of mortars in his arms , he ran for the pile of clay . From the

 cliff top , Germans were dropping grenades . Jim Eikner set up his mortars . ``

 Faces in , butts out ! '' he yelled . He shot straight up the face of the cliff

 . The Germans pulled back . On top , 1st Lt. Ted Lapres , 23 , and his men look

ed around . They , like each of the other Ranger units , had a specific mission 

. Theirs was to neutralize one of the German observation posts and to knock out 

one of the big guns . Engaging Germans as they went , but just long enough to kn

ock them out of the way , they advanced toward the battery . They stopped . Lapr

es was stunned . The guns were not there . Sgt. Lomell was still bleeding from t

he machine-gun bullets he had taken in his side . He and his men were assigned t

o knock out three of the big guns . But when they reached the battery , they , t

oo , were dumbstruck . The gun positions were huge , but they were empty . Inste

ad of guns , telephone poles were sticking out of the embrasures . Lomell and St

aff Sgt. Jack Kuhn , 24 , found a dirt road . It showed a number of tracks . The

y followed it . Lomell moved forward first while Kuhn covered him , and then vic

e versa . Leapfrogging each other , they came upon an apple orchard . It was sur

rounded by a hedgerow . They peered through it . There , about 50 feet away , hi

dden in a swale under some apple trees , were the guns . There were five in all 

. They were covered with camouflage netting and fake leaves . Germans were milli

ng around not far away about 75 of them . Kuhn worked his way into a secluded sp

ot in the hedgerow and hid . `` If one of them even looks this way or starts wal

king , '' Lomell told him , quietly , `` I want you to hit them . That 'll clue 

me , and I 'll come out the other side , and we 'll get back to the other guys .

 '' Lomell crept around the perimeter . He had taken Kuhn 's high-temperature , 

thermite grenade . He also had one of his own . Figuring any minute to be jumped

 or shot in the back , he moved in toward the guns from the rear . Their barrels

 , aimed upward at an angle toward Utah Beach , looked to be six inches across .

 Lomell stood 5-feet-9 . He could not touch the tops of them . He went to one of

 the guns . He placed one thermite grenade on its traversing mechanism and pulle

d the pin . Without any noise or smoke , the grenade melted into the mechanism a

nd welded its gears together . Then he did the same to the second gun . He took 

his submachine gun , slung over his shoulder , wrapped his field jacket around t

he stock , and quietly smashed the gun sights on all five of the weapons . He ra

n back to Kuhn . `` Jack , '' he panted , `` we have to get out of here , get ba

ck to the guys and get the rest of their grenades . '' They did . When they retu

rned , the Germans still had not moved . Kuhn took his position in the hedgerow 

. Lomell crept back to the guns and disabled all of them . He set off thermite g

renades in traversing mechanisms , breech blocks and elevation gears . The weapo

ns were ruined . He returned to Kuhn , who said : `` Come on . Let 's get the he

ll out of here . '' ( End optional trim ) -0- ` WE ' RE GOING TO CATCH HELL ' Om

aha Beach , at the center of the invasion , would be the most difficult . A mile

 out , Bob Slaughter , a 19-year-old sergeant in the 29th Division , shook hands

 , one by one , with his men . `` See you on the beach , '' he said . `` Take ca

re . Good luck . '' They loaded from the British transport Empire Javelin onto a

 landing craft . About 1,000 yards from the sand , the landing craft passed a ca

psized boat . Men were drowning . The landing craft picked up three of them , bu

t Slaughter and his men fought off the rest to keep from overloading and going d

own themselves . As they neared the sand , they could see a landing craft alread

y on the beach . German bullets raked across it . Sparks flew from the ramp . ``

 Man , '' Slaughter said to the soldier standing next to him , `` we 're going t

o catch it . We 're going to catch hell . '' Three hundred yards out , German ar

tillery and mortars opened up at Slaughter 's boat . Artillery shells splashed g

eysers into the air . The water rained down on the men , and the British coxswai

n lost his nerve . `` Step back , mates , '' the coxswain said . `` I 'm going t

o lower this ramp . '' `` No , you 're not ! '' shouted Willard Norfleet , Slaug

hter 's platoon sergeant . `` You 're going to take it all the way in . We 've g

ot heavy equipment . '' `` But we 'll all be killed ! '' `` I don't give a damn 

! '' Norfleet yelled . `` You 're going to take us all the way in . '' `` No ! W

e 'll all be killed . '' Norfleet pulled out his .45-caliber pistol . He put its

 muzzle to the coxswain 's head . `` You , '' he said , quietly , `` are going t

o take us all the way in . '' The coxswain did . When he finally lowered the ram

p , Slaughter was the fifth man off . It was 6:30 a.m. . Bullets flew . `` Get t

he hell off ! '' men shouted . `` Let 's go ! Let 's go ! Let 's go ! Let 's go 

, go , go , go ! '' Some of the men could not swim . They floundered under 60 po

unds of ammunition and gear . Slaughter , 6-feet-5 , tried to stand . The water 

was up to his chest . A dead man floated past . Other men were getting shot , bl

eeding , screaming . Several struggled toward him . They grabbed his jacket and 

his rifle . He started to go under . He knocked them away and tried to help them

 one at a time . Slaughter and several others made it to the beach . They lay at

 the edge of the water , in a torrent of machine-gun fire . Ahead of him , the s

and had a lazy curve . Nearly 1,000 feet of it stretched from the waterline wher

e he lay to a sloping shingle of stones . At the top of the shingle was a seawal

l . It was made of wood and masonry and stood from three to 12 feet high . Beyon

d it was a road that ran along the beach , then an antitank ditch six feet deep 

, then a swamp and finally a bluff about 100 feet high formidable to climb and f

ar too steep to drive . Four draws led inland , providing natural exits near the

 French villages of Vierville , St.-Laurent and Colleville . Folds in the bluff 

held foxholes , semi-permanent bunkers and concrete emplacements called Tobruks 

, big enough for a mortar team . They were filled with Germans who could cover t

he beach with flanking fire and march their bullets and shells at an angle partw

ay up the bluff itself . Bob Slaughter had to make it across the sand to the sea

wall , or they would kill him . `` I 'm going , '' he told Walfred `` Fats '' Wi

lliams , who was his No. 1 machine-gunner . `` I 'm going across . He waited unt

il some of the German guns on the bluff stopped to cool and reload . Then Bob Sl

aughter fixed his bayonet to the muzzle of his rifle . He got into a crouch . He

 ran as low as he could and as fast as he could . Bullets kicked up the sand all

 around him . He felt naked . His helmet , too loose , slapped against his head 

. He crossed the sand , stumbled into a water-filled runnel , caught his balance

 , accidentally fired his rifle , thanked God that he had not hit an American , 

kept on running and collapsed , shaking , against the seawall . He looked back :

 200 yards . It had taken an eternity . He was panting and weak in the knees . H

e was scared to death . Fats Williams came next . Then Salvatore Augeri . Then L

eonard McCanless . They huddled against the seawall and watched as others , just

 as lucky , made it too . Slaughter took his raincoat out of a large , pouch-lik

e pocket on the back of his jacket . He spread the raincoat behind the seawall .

 Then he took his rifle apart to clean it . He placed parts of his rifle on the 

coat to keep them out of the sand . Only then did he notice the bullet holes in 

his rain coat . Several of them . He showed the holes to the others . `` Look he

re , '' he said . `` I 've been shot at . ''

 WHEN PLANS ARE USELESS It was murderous . The first company ashore at Omaha too

k more than 90 percent casualties . Units fell apart . Their men intermingled . 

The beach , historian Stephen E. Ambrose says , was littered with the dead , the

 dying and the disorganized . Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower had a saying , Ambrose r

ecalls : Plans are everything before the battle . But they are useless once it i

s joined . The plan had been for amphibious tanks and bulldozers to clear the ex

it draws from the beach to Vierville and St.-Laurent and Colleville so the infan

try could advance through them into open country . But many of the tanks had sun

k . Their crews were huddling on yellow rubber rafts out on the channel . The pl

an also had called for fire support for the infantry from half-tracks and artill

ery . But the half-tracks and artillery were in chaos . The infantrymen at the s

eawall were paralyzed with fear . And the Germans were starting to lob mortars o

ver the wall . At 7:30 a.m. , a Higgins boat neared the beach , carrying the ass

istant commander of the 29th Division , Brig. Gen. Norman `` Dutch '' Cota . The

 boat hit an obstacle . The obstacle was mined , but the mine did not go off . T

he boat hung up , rising and falling with the swell . It drew withering fire . T

he coxswain lowered the ramp . Three men , including a major , were killed insta

ntly . Cota jumped into the water and reached the sand . He made it to the shing

le and then to the seawall . In an instant , he saw that the Omaha assault plan 

would not work . The men huddled around him could not advance up the exit draws 

without tanks or artillery . Cota was unafraid to do what Adolf Hitler would hav

e removed a commander for trying : something unauthorized . In the face of the G

erman fire , Cota climbed over the seawall . He dug a Browning automatic rifle i

nto the sand and raked the bluff with fire of his own . He directed some of his 

men to blow the barbed wire with a Bangalore torpedo , a pipe explosive . He and

 two other men crawled through the wire , and Cota shouted for more to follow . 

He ignored the exit draws and headed straight for the bluff . About the same tim

e , a number of others came to Cota 's conclusion : To hell with the exit draws 

. By 8 a.m. , they too were headed for the bluff instead . Some men crawled over

 the seawall by themselves . Sergeants led others . Junior officers rounded up l

eaderless units . One by one , GIs , officers and men , took charge of themselve

s and others . This , Ambrose says , was a critical moment . He calls it a pivot

al test for democracy and the self-reliance it encourages . ( Begin optional tri

m ) Col. Charles Canham , the commander of Sgt. Bob Slaughter 's regiment , pass

ed the test . Slaughter saw him coming . To Slaughter , he was a tough son of a 

bitch : Tall and lanky , he had a thin little mustache like the villain in a mov

ie , but he was one hell of a soldier . Canham came charging up to the seawall ,

 his arm in a sling . He had been shot through the right wrist . He had a .45 in

 his left hand . `` Get your ass out of there ! '' Canham screamed . He stood in

 the open , bullets and shells flying . `` What are you doing there , laying the

re like that ? Get up ! Get across the rest of this goddamn beach ! '' Canham wa

s right-handed . He emptied the pistol , left-handed , at some Germans on the bl

uff . A runner took the pistol , slipped in a new magazine and handed it back . 

Canham yelled again and fired some more . One of his battalion commanders , a li

eutenant colonel , shouted back at him from the safety of a pillbox that the Ger

mans had abandoned nearby : `` Colonel , if you don't take cover , you 're going

 to get killed ! '' `` Colonel , '' Canham fumed , `` get your goddamn ass out o

f that goddamn pillbox and get these men off this goddamn beach ! '' Slaughter c

ould not believe it . `` Goldarn , '' he said to himself , `` if that guy can do

 that , then , hell , I can too . '' Slaughter and others climbed over the wall 

. Led by men like Canham and Capt. Joe Dawson from the 29th Division , and by me

n like Capt. Robert Walker , Lt. John Spaulding and Sgt. Perry Bonner , from the

 1st Division , they went up the bluff . ( End optional trim ) Finally , GIs on 

the beach saw two heartening sights : Americans were standing on the top of the 

bluff , and German prisoners were marching down . And still Omaha Beach was not 

secure . Wreckage littered the sand . The tide was rising . The beach was shrink

ing . Progress up the bluff was bloody and slow . More troops were arriving . Th

ey brought more vehicles . Omaha developed a traffic jam . At 8:30 a.m. , the Na

vy suspended all landings . The order added to the confusion . With nowhere to g

o , more than 50 incoming landing craft began turning in circles . -0- THE CRUCI

AL MOMENT This was the moment , historian Ambrose says , that Eisenhower had fea

red the most . Nearly 5,000 Americans were ashore , cut off from reinforcements 

, unable to retreat hostages as much as invaders . It was the moment that Field 

Marshal Erwin Rommel had anticipated the most . The Americans were caught half o

n the beach and half off , wounded and bewildered . Offshore , Allied battleship

s and cruisers were helpless . They were too big to get close enough to give the

ir guns the precision to kill Germans without killing GIs . Even destroyers were

 under orders to stand down until fire control spotters could make it to shore .

 Skippers watched in angry frustration as the Germans slaughtered American infan

trymen on the sand . Finally , one of them had enough . Lt. Cmdr. Ralph Ramey , 

known in the Navy as `` Rebel , '' took it upon himself to charge the beach rega

rdless . Ambrose says that Rebel Ramey steamed his destroyer , the McCook , clos

e enough to see for himself that there were no Americans on a portion of the blu

ff near the exit draw leading to Vierville . He opened up with his 5-inch guns ,

 blasted one German pillbox off the bluff and blew up another . It was another v

ictory for American flexibility and initiative . At 9:50 a.m. , an admiral shout

ed into his ship-to-ship radio : `` Get on them , men ! Get on them ! They are r

aising hell with the men on the beach , and we can't have any more of that ! '' 

Every destroyer off Omaha responded . Skippers risked running aground to fire po

int-blank at targets of opportunity on the bluff . Ramey had fired 975 rounds ag

ainst the bluff . Other skippers fired 500 rounds , some as many as 1,120 . `` T

his destroyer action against shore batteries , '' naval historian Samuel Eliot M

orison says , `` afforded the troops the only artillery support they had during 

most of D-day . '' What the Navy had done , Ambrose says , was to give the men o

n Omaha a fighting chance . They took it , and renewed their attack against the 

German guns dug into the face of the bluff . Still more GIs scrambled past the g

un emplacements to the top . ( Begin optional trim ) On top of the bluff , Gen. 

Dutch Cota and his men found themselves midway between Vierville and St.-Laurent

 . No paratroopers had landed behind Omaha to clear its inland approaches . Germ

ans hiding in hedgerows caught Cota 's force in a cross-fire . He divided his me