Just how fragile the situation in the western camp was during invasion:

The issuance of invasion currency to Allied troops: Like many other French civil affairs questions this had been discussed by French and Allied representatives since 1943, and had bogged down. on the issue of the sovereignty of the French Committee. In an effort to avoid depreciating French currency by issuing yellow-seal dollars and British Military Authority notes to the troops, as in Italy, the British and U.S. authorities arranged in December 1943 to print special invasion money in Washington for the use of the armies. Before this could be done, the British Ambassador "unexpectedly" notified the State Department that his government preferred a French national currency issued by the French Committee of National Liberation. The immediate effect was to delay any decision on the issue for a number of weeks. To bring the matter to a head, the British Secretary of State for War, Sir James Grigg, appealed to General Eisenhower at the end of January 1944, reminding him that currency was "a vital if uninteresting necessity to successful operations."2 If General Eisenhower had ever doubted the necessity of settling such problems promptly, he had sufficient reason to change his mind when they continued to reappear in the spring and summer of 1944.

In early May, General Eisenhower forwarded to Washington proposals based on preliminary discussions with the French Military Mission in London regarding the whole financial situation in France. After a period of three weeks, having received no direction on the problem, he proposed as "a solution of desperation" to issue a proclamation declaring the supplemental francs legal tender. The Supreme Commander and his chief of staff doubted their legal right to issue such a proclamation and feared it would be considered a flagrant violation of French sovereignty, but they felt they would have to take such action unless they received other instructions by 28 May.

No agreement had been reached with the French by the time General de Gaulle reached London shortly before D Day. He was dissatisfied when he found that limited quantities of supplemental francs in small denominations had actually been given to British and U.S. soldiers in the assault units, and that larger quantities were ready when needed to supplement the five and one-half billion metropolitan francs put at the disposal of Allied forces by the War Office. His anger at this assumption of what he considered to be a prerogative of the French Committee of National Liberation apparently influenced him to forbid the 180 French liaison officers trained for civil affairs duties to sail with the assault units on D Day. He finally relented sufficiently to permit twenty liaison officers to accompany Allied troops. ( ON Collins-Lapierre "Is Paris burning?" the total number was 500 liaison officers with 20 to sail on D-day...)

http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USA/...upreme-13.html

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