my lack of experience in the field.” Côté described the 3rd Division as being better run and more honestly run than the 2nd Division. Côté stated that in the 2nd Division if ten jeeps were lost, the division's officers would ask for fifteen replacements whereas the 3rd Division never engaged in this sort of administrative corruption, always reporting its losses truthfully. In January 1944, Côté was of the few Canadian officers informed of the details of Operation Overlord and was told that the 3rd Division would be landing at a place code-named Juno Beach just beside the French village of Courseulles-sur-Mer in Normandy sometime in the spring of 1944. Côté recalled about the preparations for Overlord in Réminiscences et Souvenances: "For example, we had to plan our routes in advance, even where no paths existed; we had to bring road signs with us to indicate which way soldiers should go and to identify reinforcement gathering places and the supply stations for water, gasoline, diesel and ammunition, and we had to locate the premises of the first small field hospitals and finally predetermine the location of a cemetery." The historian Serge Durflinger who later interviewed Côté recalled that he was intensely concerned as: "He was always hoping he would measure up. Had life prepared him for this? Was he up to that task? The sense of obligation to the men and to success, the details, the care and the sense of sophistication — these are things you don’t get from reading a book about D-Day." By May 1944, Côté reported that his preparations for Overlord were complete and he felt confident that he and his staff were capable of supplying the 3rd Division when it landed in France with all its needs. In March 1944, one of Côté's old friends from the 'Van Doos', Captain Paul Triquet, won the Victoria Cross for his actions in the Battle of Casa Berardi in Italy in December 1943. Côté wrote to his friend upon hearing the news on 8 March 1944: "Il n'y a personne que je connais dont le tempérament était mieux forgé à la bataille et préparé au VC que toi-même" ("There is no one I know whose temper was better forged for battle and prepared for the VC than yourself"). During the planning for Operation Overlord, Côté soon realized that General Rod Keller, the GOC of the 3rd Division, had a