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

 windows . Now , however , the weather briefer predicted a break in the storm . 

Around the mess-room table , commanders of the Supreme Headquarters Allied Exped

itionary Force cheered . But , the briefer added , some scattered clouds would c

ontinue to hang over the Normandy coast . Conditions still would be risky for fi

ghters and bombers . Eisenhower 's commanders were split . It was up to him . ``

 The question is , '' he said , `` just how long can you hang this operation on 

the end of a limb and let it hang there ? '' Nobody answered . He paced . The on

ly sound was the rain on the windows . `` I am quite positive , '' he said , fin

ally , `` that the order must be given . '' D-day would be June 6 . At 3:30 a.m.

 on June 5 , he received another weather briefing . The wind was driving the rai

n sideways . By now , the storm should have been letting up . It was still not t

oo late to call it all off and to try again June 19 . The weather briefer was mo

re sure than ever that the storm would break . But there was a new worry . He sa

id the good weather would last for only one day . This meant that Allied troops 

on the second day of the attack might not make it ashore . Eisenhower knew that 

putting off the invasion for two more weeks was certain to increase chances that

 the Germans would learn about the plans . Eisenhower said later he paced for ab

out 45 seconds . Others said it took him as long as five minutes . Then , Ambros

e says , he turned to his commanders and said , quietly : `` OK , let 's go . ''

 AIR DROP TO CHAOS The pathfinders went first . They parachuted into Normandy to

 mark landing zones for 13,000 American and 7,000 British paratroopers , the mos

t massive night drop ever . Their mission was to secure the routes to the beache

s and disrupt any German counterattack . It took more than 800 C-47s to fly all 

the Americans across . They were members of the 101st and the 82nd Airborne divi

sions . The aircraft , in full flight , stretched all the way from Britain , nin

e planes wide , cruising 100 feet from wingtip to wingtip . As they reached Norm

andy , they found that some scattered clouds were lingering over the coast . Pil

ots lost their visibility . In radio silence , with only tiny blue lights on the

 aircraft ahead to guide them , they separated to avoid colliding . All flew off

 course . The Germans opened fire . Only one of 18 American pathfinder teams lan

ded where it should have . Pvt. Robert Murphy , 18 , was part of that team . He 

assembled his radar . He waited for the sound of more planes , then looked up . 

Never before had he seen so many parachutes . Nearly 1,800 men were falling in h

is drop zone , but it looked more like 5,000 , maybe 10,000 . Some of the paratr

oopers were shot in the air . Others fell into trees . One tumbled into a pile o

f manure . Many landed in a flood that Rommel had created for them . He had open

ed the locks on the Merderet River at high tide . Water covered the surrounding 

farm fields . Somehow , Allied reconnaissance had missed it . The water was no m

ore than four feet deep , but that was enough . Sgt. Robert Williams , 21 , with

 the 101st , fell into it up to his chest . Between 50 and 100 feet away , in th

e dark , he could hear gurgling . Men were drowning . First Lt. Jack Isaacs , wh

o was a platoon leader in the 82nd , fell through an antiaircraft barrage withou

t a scratch . It lighted the sky around him with green , red and yellow streams 

of fire . He landed near some cows in a pasture seven miles from his target , th

e village of Ste.-Mere-Eglise . He had no idea where his men were . He located a

 stranger from another unit . Together they found a paratrooper speared by a sta

lk of `` Rommel 's asparagus . '' Isaacs gave him a shot of morphine . With his 

assent , Isaacs plunged the man 's rifle bayonet-first into the ground and put h

is helmet on the upturned rifle butt a universal sign of surrender . Isaacs roun

ded up 35 other men only one from his platoon , the rest strangers and prepared 

to set out for Ste.-Mere-Eglise . He turned to take a last look at the paratroop

er impaled on the asparagus and saw a German soldier approach him from a hedgero

w . The German shot him . Isaacs ' men wheeled and fired . The German fell . Lt.

 Col. Edward Krause , a battalion commander in the 82nd , led the Allied attack 

. He drove the German garrison in the village into retreat . He occupied buildin

gs and set up roadblocks . He cut telephone lines and established gun posts . ( 

Begin optional trim ) A gunner in one of those posts had a feeling he was not al

one . He wheeled around and saw a pair of boots swaying back and forth . The mac

hine gunner looked up . Hanging in a tree , looming over him , was a dead paratr

ooper . There were others hanging in the trees , where they had landed and then 

been shot dead . In twos and threes , fellow paratroopers entered the village sq

uare . They looked up , Cornelius Ryan says , and they felt a surge of anger . L

t. Col. Krause reached the square . He said only three words : `` Oh , my God . 

'' Then , Ryan says , Krause pulled an American flag from his pocket , old and w

orn , the flag his regiment had raised over Naples . He walked to the town hall 

and ran up the colors . ( End optional trim ) Ste.-Mere-Eglise was the first Fre

nch village to be liberated by the Americans . -0- HELL IN THE HEDGEROW Behind t

he paratroopers came the gliders . They were fragile craft , made of plywood and

 canvas . Towed across the channel by propeller-driven aircraft , the gliders ca

rried entire platoons of support troops , as well as Jeeps , antitank guns and s

mall bulldozers . They were turned loose to land in the fields . But they hit he

dgerows . The glider pilots were expecting English-style hedgerows , low enough 

for fox hunters to jump . Instead , these were shrubs and saplings , five to eig

ht feet tall , planted in dirt embankments and so dense they seemed solid . If a

 glider pilot approached a farm field high enough to clear the leading hedgerow 

, he could not get his glider down fast enough to avoid the hedgerow at the far 

end . If he tried to pull up and over the end hedgerow , he would stall and cras

h . The Norman hedgerows took a heavier toll than `` Rommel 's asparagus . '' By

 4:30 a.m. , all Allied paratroopers and their glider-borne support troops were 

on the ground . Almost to a man , however , they had been scattered so far from 

their drop sites that they had no idea where they were . Gen. Maxwell D. Taylor 

, commander of the 101st , for instance , landed by himself . Lost , he wandered

 for 20 minutes before encountering his first trooper , a private . In the darkn

ess , Taylor clicked twice on a toy cricket , issued to each man in training . T

he private returned a single click . It signaled that he was an American . Both 

men were so relieved , they hugged each other . Together they stumbled on until 

they had gathered together another general , a colonel , 18 other officers and 4

0 men . `` Never , '' Taylor cracked , `` have so few been led by so many . '' A

s they drew closer to Ste.-Marie-du-Mont , they could see its church steeple , a

nd Taylor knew for the first time where they were . He moved his band of men eas

t toward the village of Pouppeville and an exit from the beach . As they neared 

Pouppeville , they ran into gunfire . Sixty Germans held the town . They were fi

ring from second-story windows . It took Taylor nearly three hours to drive them

 out . He suffered 18 casualties , inflicted 25 and captured 40 Germans . Taylor

 took possession of the top of the beach exit . It would be only a matter of tim

e before his men would see the U.S. 4th Division coming inland . It was led by a

 tank . Taylor 's men could not tell for sure whether the tank was friendly . Ta

ylor 's men fired . A hatch opened , and a tanker waved an orange banner , signa

ling that he was American . Capt. George L. Mabry , an infantry officer in the 8

th Regiment , walked around the side of the tank . Taylor shook his hand . Befor

e the end of the day , the 101st Airborne would open the way for the 4th Divisio

n , drive a German battalion out of Ste.-Marie-du-Mont , and destroy German batt

eries at Bretcourt Manor and Holdy . But the victories came at a steep price . M

any of the men of the 101st were missing . Of 6,600 who had jumped , only 2,500 

were assembled into fighting units . ( Begin optional trim ) In some cases , men

 of the 101st and the 82nd were so jumbled together by the chaotic jump that it 

took a week to sort them out . At midmorning , men in the 82nd were still trying

 to find one another . Worse , they had landed on both sides of the Merderet Riv

er . Thanks to Rommel 's flood , it was more like a lake . There were only two w

ays to cross . One was a causeway and bridge at La Fiere . The other was a cause

way and bridge at Chef-du-Pont . Gen. James Gavin , the assistant division comma

nder , put together 300 men , took them to La Fiere and Chef-du-Pont and capture

d the causeways . The Germans counterattacked . Maj. Gen. Matthew B . Ridgway , 

commander of the 82nd , feared that his division might be destroyed before it , 

like the 101st , could connect with the 4th Infantry Division moving inland . Af

ter nightfall , the 4th arrived . It found the causeway at Chef-du-Pont secure i

n Allied hands . ( End optional trim ) -0- DAWN AND THE FLEET Never before had s

o many planes flown in anger . On D-day , the Allies launched 3,467 heavy bomber

s , 1,645 medium bombers and 5,409 fighters . German antiaircraft destroyed 113 

, but not one was shot down by the Luftwaffe . The Germans flew 250 sorties duri

ng the invasion . The Allies flew more than 14,000 . The Americans and British d

ropped more bombs on Normandy in two hours than they had on Hamburg , the most h

eavily bombed city in Germany , during all of 1943 . But they were not entirely 

successful . At Utah Beach , the B-26s destroyed much of the Atlantic Wall befor

e the Germans could fire a shot . At Omaha , Gold , Juno and Sword , however , m

any of the bombs from the B-17s and the B-24s missed the wall and fell on the Fr

ench countryside . The clouds were partly to blame . But so was the fact that so

me bomber crews flinched . Only 1,000 yards separated their targets and the firs

t wave of Allied landing craft . To avoid hitting fellow Americans , the crews h

eld onto their bombs for too long . From the air , the incoming ships were a sig

ht that pilots never forgot . Minesweepers by the score were headed for the sand

 . Behind them were landing craft by the hundreds , trailing a churn of white wa

ter . The Germans , historian Stephen E. Ambrose says , heard nothing and saw no

thing . At 3:09 a.m. , their radar finally picked up the fleet . They sent out s

ome torpedo boats and two armed trawlers . But the German vessels were like gnat

s against a hurricane . They sank only one ship , the Norwegian destroyer Svenne

r . At 5:20 a.m. , it grew light . Fifteen minutes later , German shore batterie

s opened fire . The Allied battleships replied , Ambrose says , like Zeus hurlin

g thunderbolts . By 6 a.m. , all of the landing craft had launched their skirted

 , amphibious tanks . Higgins boats passed among the tanks in the water , headin

g for shore . The battleships and the cruisers raised a wall of sound so immense

 it could be felt . When the warships lifted their fire , the landing craft carr

ying tanks opened up . Fourteen thousand rockets whistled over the heads of the 

men in the Higgins boats as they neared the sand . Finally , the tanks themselve

s began to fire . Wind rolled back the smoke . H-hour was at hand . Next : `` We

 'll start the war here . ''

 NEW YORK Eight million Broadway theatergoers paid a record $ 356 million at the

 box office during the '93-'94 season that just ended , the League of American T

heaters and Producers said Wednesday . Along with the gross receipts record was 

the continuation of a five-year rise in total attendance , to 8.1 million . ( Th

e attendance record is 11 million , set in 1980-81 . ) The Broadway gross for th

e '92-'93 season was $ 328 million , with total attendance of 7.9 million . The 

bulk of last season 's ticket revenues , almost $ 300 million , came from musica

ls , most of them long-running shows from previous years . Only two musicals fro

m '93-'94 , `` Beauty and the Beast '' and `` Passion , '' were playing at the e

nd of the season . Top Broadway ticket prices remained at $ 65 for the third con

secutive year , but at least one musical , `` Show Boat , '' will come in next f

all with a $ 75 top . The average cost of admission for all shows was $ 43.94 , 

compared to $ 41.71 in the previous season . The reason for the increase was a r

ise in ticket prices for some non-musical shows . One , `` Angels in America , '

' has gone to $ 65 , the same as musicals charge . At season 's end , there were

 25 shows running on Broadway , compared to 19 at this time a year ago . Because

 of the slim number of holdover shows , the season began slowly last summer . Th

e quick failure of seven shows last fall , followed by severe snowstorms early t

his year , kept attendance below comparable levels of the previous season . Not 

until about two months ago did attendance rise dramatically . The league also re

ported figures for major national touring productions : gross receipts of $ 688 

million , a record , and estimated attendance of 16.5 million .

 SANTO DOMINGO , Dominican Republic According to a newspaper editor who has know

n him for many years , the president of the Dominican Republic , 87-year-old Joa

quin Balaguer , is above all else a pragmatist . This fact was manifest last wee

k when Balaguer faced with mounting U.S. pressure abruptly reversed his reluctan

ce to enforce sanctions on Haiti . The Dominican leader agreed , during a meetin

g with Clinton 's special adviser on Haiti , William H . Gray , to help the Unit

ed States and the international community seal the long border between his count

ry and Haiti . He did so after listening to Gray explain that the Clinton admini

stration believes Dominican laxity in enforcing the U.N.-imposed sanctions has a

llowed Haiti 's ruling generals to continue to get the oil they need to retain t

heir hold on power . U.S. officials deny there was any quid pro quo , but Balagu

er 's sudden turnaround sparks a series of interesting questions . First and for

emost : Will his new cooperation with the United States serve to reduce Washingt

on 's interest in fraud allegations regarding last month 's Dominican presidenti

al election , in which Balaguer has been declared the victor by a narrow margin 

? His chief electoral rival , Dr. Jose Francisco Pena Gomez , believes the aging

 incumbent struck a deal with the United States . `` I foresee a moderation from

 Washington , '' he said . Other important questions : Does Balaguer actually ha

ve the will and the ability to compel the Dominican army to enforce the embargo 

? And even if he does , will closing the border thereby enhancing the efficacy o

f U.N. sanctions on Haiti succeed in bringing about the downfall of the military

 regime in Port au Prince ? And perhaps most important : Will Dominican complian

ce enable President Clinton to escape the dead-end Haiti policy he has been purs

uing-a policy headed toward restoring left-leaning priest Jean-Bertrand Aristide

 to power by means of a U.S.-led military invasion ? I spoke with Balaguer , who

 heads up the Social Christian Reformist Party , at length a few days ago , both

 about the disputed Dominican elections and about his decision to seal the borde

r with Haiti . He took the opportunity to protest charges leveled by former cong

ressman Stephen Solarz who served as a U.S.-appointed monitor during the electio

ns that widespread fraud , carried out in large part by the ruling party , disto

rted the final results . `` This is not true , '' Balaguer said , arguing that h

is party won a free and fair election . He acknowledges only that a few voters w

ere unintentionally left off voting lists . But he contends that all parties suf

fered equally from this circumstance . Nevertheless , Balaguer says he will abid

e by the decision of the Dominican Electoral Board a body charged with handing d

own a final verdict on the election . In fact , the Organization of American Sta

tes as well as the Electoral Board are investigating Pena Gomez 's charge that w

idespread and deliberate irregularities led to the disenfranchisement of at leas

t 200,000 of Pena 's followers . Pena told me that many of his supporters ' name

s appeared on the original voting lists but not on separate lists kept at voting

 places . So far , the OAS has documented irregularities in 28 of 107 municipali

ties . But well-placed neutral observers told me that OAS officials lack hard ev

idence that the irregularities were sufficient to alter the election 's outcome 

. As for the Haiti embargo , Balaguer does not pass judgment on whether it is a 

good thing . He says simply that the Dominican Republic will work to make it eff

ective because the international community has decided to enhance the embargo . 

`` We abide by international decisions , '' he said . Some have questioned wheth

er he can persuade the Dominican army to to go along with such an effort , given

 the profits so many Dominicans derive from the smuggling . `` I have not only m

oral authority over ( the army ) , '' says Balaguer , `` but they are obedient a

nd totally loyal to me at least the vast majority . '' He goes on to acknowledge

 , however , that `` It is a great temptation to buy a gallon of gas for $ 1 and

 sell it in Haiti for $ 10 . '' Balaguer expressed a willingness to follow the r

ecommendations of a U.N. expert team with respect to sealing the long and porous

 border , and said he 'll ask for other technical help from the international co

mmunity in this effort . Balaguer , who is no admirer of Aristide , says that wh

at Haiti needs is a new ruler not Aristide and not the army but a third party wh

o `` will think more about the welfare and stability of Haiti . '' Balaguer thin

ks Aristide 's return is unlikely to produce positive results , but neither does

 he approve of the military regime now in power there . If there is a U.S.-led m

ilitary invasion of Haiti , Balaguer insists that the invaders have an obligatio

n to stop Haitians from fleeing into the Dominican Republic . During the recent 

presidential campaign , Balaguer accused Pena Gomez of planning to merge the Dom

inican Republic and Haiti into one country , a charge that was particularly effe

ctive . Pena in turn accuses Balaguer of conducting a racist campaign aimed at p

reventing a `` poor black man '' like himself from becoming president . Dominica

ns tell me that their country is on the verge of civil strife that violence coul

d break out at any moment if Pena encourages his followers to take to the street

s . The Clinton administration , currently focused on changing the regime in Hai

ti , would do well to give some attention to keeping the Dominican Republic stab

le . Unlike Haiti , it is a country where there are major American business inte

rests and one that has strong commercial ties with the United States . A Dominic

an editor , German Ornes , sums it up succinctly : `` We are divided , and anyth

ing could bring this division to a civil war . The United States should be caref

ul , because it could have a bigger problem than Haiti if this country explodes 

. ''

 WASHINGTON Thousands of federal engineers , scientists , secretaries and medica

l personnel who were bypassed by the 1994 pay raise would get a 2 percent payche

ck transfusion in 1995 if Congress and the White House allow a scheduled nationa

l pay raise to take effect . The majority of federal employees who are not paid 

special higher rates would get both the national raise and a locality adjustment

 that together would be worth about 3.3 percent . The difference between a natio

nal and locality raise may seem like bureaucratic nit-picking , but it is a big 

deal to hundreds of thousands of workers nationwide who are eligible for nationa

l but not locality raises . Here 's why : Most federal workers are on a straight

 civil service pay scale for their area . They get both national and locality ra

ises . Workers who are paid special higher rates because of location New York , 

Los Angeles or San Francisco or because they are in hard-to-fill jobs get nation

al raises , but don't get locality increases unless they exceed the amount of th

eir differentials . In the three cities those differentials are 8 percent . For 

special raters the differentials are 3 percent to 30 percent higher than the reg

ular grade salary scale . Most of the special raters were excluded from the Janu

ary 1994 pay raise because it was a locality adjustment . The Clinton administra

tion barred the 2.2 percent national raise which , if approved , would have gone

 to them . The White House has doubts about the way past government surveys prod

uced a 30 percent gap between government and industry salaries . That 's why it 

tried to freeze pay in 1994 , and wants less than full increases in 1995 . Gover

nment data shows federal employees nationwide are due a 2.6 percent raise , plus

 yet-to-be-determined locality adjustments that would vary from city to city . T

he House is working on a compromise that gives all workers the 2 percent raise ,

 plus half the locality adjustment to eligible employees . Special raters would 

get only the national 2 percent portion . The system of dual national and local 

raises was approved by Congress during the Bush administration . It promised to 

gradually close the national and hometown , federal vs. private sector pay gap t

hrough a series of precision-crafted raises . Both raises are automatic unless C

ongress or the White House object . The White House objects on grounds that the