Remarks at the ceremony commemorating the (then) 40th Anniversary
of the D-Day Normandy Invasion:
We're here to mark that day in history when the Allied
peoples joined in battle to reclaim this continent to liberty.
For four long
years, much of Europe had been under a terrible shadow.
Free nations had
fallen, Jews cried out in the camp...
Millions cried out for liberation.
Europe was enslaved, and the world prayed for its rescue.
Here in Normandy the
rescue began.
Here the Allies stood and fought against tyranny in a giant
undertaking unparalleled in human history.
We stand on a lonely, windswept point on the northern
shore of France. The air is soft, but forty years ago at this moment, the air
was dense with smoke and the cries of men, and the air was filled with the
crack of rifle fire and the roar of cannon.
At dawn, on the morning of the 6th
of June, 1944, two-hundred and twenty-five Rangers jumped off the British landing craft and ran to the
bottom of these cliffs. Their mission was one of the most difficult and daring
of the invasion: to climb these sheer and desolate cliffs and take out the
enemy guns. The Allies had been told that some of the mightiest of these guns
were here, and they would be trained on the beaches to stop the Allied advance.
The Rangers looked up and saw the enemy soldiers -- at
the edge of the cliffs shooting down at them with machine guns and throwing
grenades.
And the American Rangers began to climb.
They shot rope ladders over
the face of these cliffs and began to pull themselves up.
When one Ranger fell,
another would take his place.
When one rope was cut, a Ranger would grab
another and begin his climb again.
They climbed, shot back, and held their
footing. Soon, one by one, the Rangers pulled themselves over the top, and in
seizing the firm land at the top of these cliffs, they began to seize back the
continent of Europe. Two hundred and twenty-five came here. After two days of
fighting, only ninety could still bear arms.
Behind me is a memorial that symbolizes the Ranger
daggers that were thrust into the top of these cliffs. And before me are the
men who put them there.
These are the boys of Pointe du Hoc.
These are the men
who took the cliffs.
These are the champions who helped free a continent.
These
are the heroes who helped end a war.
Gentlemen, I look at you and I think of the words of
Stephen Spender's poem. You are men who in your "lives fought for
life...and left the vivid air signed with your honor…."
Forty summers have passed since the battle that you
fought here. You were young the day you took these cliffs; some of you were
hardly more than boys, with the deepest joys of life before you. Yet you risked
everything here.
Why? Why did you do it?
What impelled you to put aside the
instinct for self-preservation and risk your lives to take these cliffs?
What
inspired all the men of the armies that met here?
We look at you, and somehow
we know the answer. It was faith, and belief; it was loyalty and love.
The men of Normandy had faith that what they were doing
was right, faith that they fought for all humanity, faith that a just God would
grant them mercy on this beachhead or on the next. It was the deep knowledge -
and pray God we have not lost it - that there is a profound moral difference
between the use of force for liberation and the use of force for conquest. You
were here to liberate, not to conquer, and so you and those others did not
doubt your cause. And you were right not to doubt.
You all knew that some things are worth dying for. One's
country is worth dying for, and democracy is worth dying for, because it's the
most deeply honorable form of government ever devised by man.
All of you loved
liberty.
All of you were willing to fight tyranny, and you knew the people of
your countries were behind you.
Amen
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