None of this below is my writing. Tells you why D-Day was a big deal and why those who were there should be honored.
On June 6, 1944, Operation Overlord commenced with the D-Day landings on the beaches of Normandy, France. The scale of the invasion is hard to imagine: an air-and-amphibious assault involving nearly 7,000 Naval vessels and 160,000 Allied troops who crossed the English Channel earlier that morning, with ships and blimps and planes as far as the eye could see. Describing the material wreckage roughly a week after the invasion, Ernie Pyle wrote:
Standing out there on the water beyond all this wreckage was the greatest armada man has ever seen. You simply could not believe the gigantic collection of ships that lay out there waiting to unload. Looking from the bluff, it lay thick and clear to the far horizon of the sea and beyond, and it spread out to the sides and was miles wide. Its utter enormity could move the hardest man.
As I stood up there [on a bluff overlooking the sea] I noticed a group of freshly taken German prisoners standing nearby. They had not yet been put in the prison cage. They were just standing there, a couple of doughboys leisurely guarding them with tommy guns. The prisoners too were looking out to sea—the same bit of sea that for months and years had been so safely empty before their gaze. Now they stood staring almost as if in a trance. They didn’t say a word to each other. They didn’t need to. The expression on their faces was something forever unforgettable. In it was the final horrified acceptance of their doom.
In a later column, Pyle went on to describe the human cost of the invasion, writing about the miles and miles of “strewn personal gear, gear that will never be needed again, of those who fought and died to give us our entrance into Europe.”
Remembering the invasion 40 years later, Ronald Reagan stood on the top of Pointe du Hoc, at the place where 225 Army Rangers, under enemy fire, had scaled the cliffs with rope ladders in order to destroy German artillery that could be used against Allied forces landing on the other beaches. Of the 225 Rangers, fewer than half of them were still able to fight two days later.
Here is an excerpt from Reagan’s tribute:
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.”
I think I know what you may be thinking right now—thinking “we were just part of a bigger effort; everyone was brave that day.” Well, everyone was. Do you remember the story of Bill Millin of the 51st Highlanders? Forty years ago today, British troops were pinned down near a bridge, waiting desperately for help. Suddenly, they heard the sound of bagpipes, and some thought they were dreaming. Well, they weren’t. They looked up and saw Bill Millin with his bagpipes, leading the reinforcements and ignoring the smack of the bullets into the ground around him. Lord Lovat was with him—Lord Lovat of Scotland, who calmly announced when he got to the bridge, “Sorry I’m a few minutes late,” as if he’d been delayed by a traffic jam, when in truth he’d just come from the bloody fighting on Sword Beach, which he and his men had just taken.
[…]
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? […] 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
Remembering D-Day « The Enterprise Blog
On June 6, 1944, Operation Overlord commenced with the D-Day landings on the beaches of Normandy, France. The scale of the invasion is hard to imagine: an air-and-amphibious assault involving nearly 7,000 Naval vessels and 160,000 Allied troops who crossed the English Channel earlier that morning, with ships and blimps and planes as far as the eye could see. Describing the material wreckage roughly a week after the invasion, Ernie Pyle wrote:
Standing out there on the water beyond all this wreckage was the greatest armada man has ever seen. You simply could not believe the gigantic collection of ships that lay out there waiting to unload. Looking from the bluff, it lay thick and clear to the far horizon of the sea and beyond, and it spread out to the sides and was miles wide. Its utter enormity could move the hardest man.
As I stood up there [on a bluff overlooking the sea] I noticed a group of freshly taken German prisoners standing nearby. They had not yet been put in the prison cage. They were just standing there, a couple of doughboys leisurely guarding them with tommy guns. The prisoners too were looking out to sea—the same bit of sea that for months and years had been so safely empty before their gaze. Now they stood staring almost as if in a trance. They didn’t say a word to each other. They didn’t need to. The expression on their faces was something forever unforgettable. In it was the final horrified acceptance of their doom.
In a later column, Pyle went on to describe the human cost of the invasion, writing about the miles and miles of “strewn personal gear, gear that will never be needed again, of those who fought and died to give us our entrance into Europe.”
Remembering the invasion 40 years later, Ronald Reagan stood on the top of Pointe du Hoc, at the place where 225 Army Rangers, under enemy fire, had scaled the cliffs with rope ladders in order to destroy German artillery that could be used against Allied forces landing on the other beaches. Of the 225 Rangers, fewer than half of them were still able to fight two days later.
Here is an excerpt from Reagan’s tribute:
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.”
I think I know what you may be thinking right now—thinking “we were just part of a bigger effort; everyone was brave that day.” Well, everyone was. Do you remember the story of Bill Millin of the 51st Highlanders? Forty years ago today, British troops were pinned down near a bridge, waiting desperately for help. Suddenly, they heard the sound of bagpipes, and some thought they were dreaming. Well, they weren’t. They looked up and saw Bill Millin with his bagpipes, leading the reinforcements and ignoring the smack of the bullets into the ground around him. Lord Lovat was with him—Lord Lovat of Scotland, who calmly announced when he got to the bridge, “Sorry I’m a few minutes late,” as if he’d been delayed by a traffic jam, when in truth he’d just come from the bloody fighting on Sword Beach, which he and his men had just taken.
[…]
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? […] 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
Remembering D-Day « The Enterprise Blog
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