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ATTLEBORO - It was just past midnight on June 6, 1944, and most of The Attleboro Sun's employees were asleep at home. Only Frank Feeney was sitting in the darkened newsroom, listening to a shortwave radio and keeping vigil by the AP teletype, when the news finally came.

Feeney listened closely as bulletins trickled in from Nazi Germany, hinting at a major Allied offensive under way off the coast of France.

The reports, though unconfirmed, quickly grew more definitive, and at 2 a.m. Feeney called the newspaper's top executives, who hurried into the newsroom.

By 2:45, workers had thrown the switches to start heating The Sun's printing presses, hours ahead of the afternoon paper's usual schedule.

As film director Ken Burns notes in tonight's installment of the PBS documentary "The War," the same scene that took place at the forerunner to The Sun Chronicle was repeated in newsrooms across the country that Tuesday morning, as word came that after months of tense uncertainty, the long-awaited Allied invasion of Europe - D-Day - was under way. At 3:25 a.m., the AP telegraphed word that an official military announcement was due within minutes.

Immediately, the entire Sun staff was called in - editors, printers, stereotypes, pressmen, circulation heads, receptionists, newsboys - to prepare for the biggest day in the paper's six-decade history.

Then, at 3:33 a.m., the AP wire began to click: "Flash - London: Eisenhower's headquarters announces Allies land in France."

The first person the paper notified was Attleboro's chief air raid warden, Archie Stentiford, and then the news was posted publicly - not on a Web site back then, but in the windows of The Sun's downtown office, where news-hungry residents had begun to gather outside.

Word of the invasion quickly spread, as people woke their neighbors and called their relatives; the city's chief telephone operator had to call in extra staff.

Before dawn, a sign was posted on the church door at Centenary Methodist: "Open For Prayer."

Within hours, all the city's churches had opened their doors.

At Murray Unitarian on North Main Street, worshippers prayed in front of a white candle burning on the communion table to represent "the unity of all nations." The Catholic bishop of Fall River ordered a Triduum of Prayer at all parishes.

Meanwhile, The Sun's staff worked furiously to put together an early edition, which hit the streets at 6 a.m. (In spite of the invasion, though, Stentiford evidently had some spare time on his hands; the chief air raid warden delievered hot coffee to the newsroom.)

The 2,000 copies printed of that first edition, hawked by newsboys at 3 cents a paper, sold out quickly. The newspaper's employees borrowed gasoline from the city police department to get copies to neighboring towns. Early editions were also delivered to Attleboro's war factories, where workers on the overnight shift let out a cheer at the news, then got back to work. That and all the following editions of the paper on June 6 featured special advertisements from city businesses, including full-page spreads from London's department store and Automated Machine Parts, observing the day's invasion and asking residents to buy war bonds. The ads had been prepared the previous month and held for publication in D-Day editions of The Sun.

Patriotic fervor ran so strong on D-Day that London's ran out of bonds before its 9 p.m. closing time, and had to promise later delivery for its last customers.

Meanwhile, bulletins continued to pour in with news from Europe. Buying a new edition of the newspaper then was like pressing refresh on thesunchronicle.com today, and The Sun was already printing a third edition by 8 a.m.

Updated editions followed throughout the afternoon and into the evening. With circulation exceeding 14,000, D-Day was the biggest day in The Attleboro Sun's history.

It was a beautiful spring day - the Yankees were playing at Fenway - and the high temperature hit 75. Just before 11 a.m., air raid sirens sounded across Attleboro as the city marked the invasion with a moment of silence.

"Many factories reported a most respectful quiet during the two minutes of silence," a Sun reporter wrote. "There was no laughing and no smoking."

The paper also got reaction to the invasion from Henry Burns, Attleboro's last living veteran of the Civil War, which had ended almost 80 years before D-Day in 1865.

"With every confidence we are on the side of God and the right," the elderly soldier declared. "Let us pray for the brave boys who are carrying our flag forward to victory."

On June 5, a triumphant AP ad had declared the conflict to be "The Best Covered War In History!" On June 7, one Sun editor marveled: "When invasion pictures taken yesterday morning in the English channel are reproduced in the 2:07 p.m. edition of yesterday's Sun, a real scientific marvel has been achieved for newspaper readers."

That spring, as throughout the war, the newspaper was filled with photographs of young men in uniform: some decorated, some promoted, some killed in action. The Sun proudly reported that a Plainville native, serving as a lieutenant in the Army, was quoted by Allied headquarters describing the invasion's progress.

Like their fellow Americans across the country, anxious city residents huddled by their radios and listened as President Franklin Roosevelt delivered a prayer for the troops' safety at 10 p.m.

"A great number of homes are deeply concerned about the progress for the invasion of the western shores of Europe," a Sun editorial soberly noted, before moving on to ponder the prospects for the postwar economy.

And, as one anonymous Sun writer noted, D-Day proved lucrative for the city's best prognosticators: "This was a great day for paying off bets on the invasion day, especially by the minority that believed (1) that the invasion had already begun days ago and (2) that it wouldn't be necessary to invade."

TED NESI can be reached at tnesi@thesunchronicle.com or 508-236-0434.