    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: George W. Bush (2004, Book I)]
    [June 6, 2004]
    [Pages 1006-1009]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks on the 60th Anniversary of D-Day in Colleville-sur-Mer, France
    June 6, 2004

        Mr. President and Mrs. Chirac; Secretary Powell and
    Secretary Principi; General
    Myers; Members of the United States
    Congress; my fellow Americans; and ladies and gentlemen: It is a high
    honor to represent the American people here at Normandy on the 6th of
    June, 2004.
        Twenty summers ago, another American President came here to Normandy
    to pay tribute to the men of D-day. He was a courageous man himself and
    a gallant leader in the cause of freedom. And today we honor the memory
    of Ronald Reagan.
        Mr. President, thank you for your
    gracious welcome to the reunion of Allies. History reminds us that
    France was America's first friend in the world.
        With us today are Americans who first saw this place at a distance,
    in the half-light of a Tuesday morning long ago. Time and providence
    have brought them back to see once more the beaches and the cliffs, the
    crosses and the Stars of David. Generations to come will know what
    happened here, but these men heard the guns. Visitors will always pay
    respects at this cemetery, but these veterans come looking for a name
    and remembering faces and voices from a lifetime ago. Today we honor all
    the veterans of Normandy and all their comrades who never left.
        On this day in 1944, President Franklin Roosevelt addressed the
    American people, not with a speech but with a prayer. He prayed that God
    would bless America's sons and ``Lead them straight and true.'' He
    continued, ``They will need Thy blessings. They will be sore tired, by
    night and by day, without rest--until victory is won. The darkness will
    be rent by noise and flame.

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    Men's souls will be shaken with the violences of war.''
        As Americans prayed along, more than 12,000 Allied aircraft and
    about 5,000 naval vessels were carrying out General Eisenhower's order
    of the day. In this massive undertaking, there was a plan for
    everything, except for failure. Eisenhower said, ``This operation is
    planned as a victory, and that's the way it is going to be.''
        They had waited for one break in the weather, and then it came. Men
    were sent in by parachute and by glider. And on this side of the
    Channel, through binoculars and gunsights, German soldiers could see
    coming their way the greatest armada anyone had ever seen. In the lead
    were hundreds of landing craft carrying brave and frightened men.
        Only the ones who made that crossing can know what it was like. They
    tell of the pitching deck, the whistles of shells from the battleships
    behind them, the white jets of water from enemy fire around them, and
    then the sound of bullets hitting the steel ramp that was about to fall.
    One GI later said, ``As our boat touched sand and the ramp went down, I
    became a visitor to hell.''
        Hitler's Atlantic Wall was composed of mines and tank obstacles,
    trenches and jutting cliffs, gun emplacements and pillboxes, barbed
    wire, machinegun nests, and artillery trained accurately on the beach.
    In the first wave of the landing here at Omaha, one unit suffered 91
    percent casualties. As General Omar Bradley later wrote, ``Six hours
    after the landings, we held only 10 yards of beach.'' A British commando
    unit had half its men killed or wounded while taking the town of St.
    Aubin. A D-day veteran remembers, ``The only thing that made me feel
    good was to look around and try to find somebody who looked more scared
    than I felt. That man was hard to find.''
        At all the beaches and landing grounds of D-day, men saw some images
    they would spend a lifetime preferring to forget. One soldier carries
    the memory of three paratroopers dead and hanging from telephone poles
    ``like a horrible crucifixion scene.'' All who fought saw images of pain
    and death, raw and relentless.
        The men of D-day also witnessed scenes they would proudly and
    faithfully recount, scenes of daring and self-giving that went beyond
    anything the Army or the country could ask. They remember men like
    Technician Fifth Grade John Pinder, Jr., whose job was to deliver vital
    radio equipment to the beach. He was gravely wounded before he hit
    shore, and he kept going. He delivered the radio and, instead of taking
    cover, went back into the surf three more times to salvage equipment.
    Under constant enemy fire, this young man from Pennsylvania was shot
    twice again and died on the beach below us.
        The ranks of the Allied Expeditionary Force were filled with men who
    did a specific assigned task, from clearing mines to unloading boats to
    scaling cliffs, whatever the danger, whatever the cost. And the sum of
    this duty was an unstoppable force. By the end of June 6th, 1944, more
    than 150,000 Allied soldiers had breached Fortress Europe.
        When the news of D-day went out to the world, the world understood
    the immensity of the moment. The New York Daily News pulled its lead
    stories to print the Lord's Prayer on its front page. In Ottawa, the
    Canadian Parliament rose to sing ``God Save the King'' and the
    ``Marseillaise.'' Broadcasting from London, King George told his people,
    ``This time the challenge is not to fight to survive but to fight to
    win.'' Broadcasting from Paris, Nazi authorities told citizens that
    anyone cooperating with the Allies would be shot, and across France, the
    Resistance defied those warnings.
        Near the village of Colleville, a young woman on a bicycle raced to
    her parents' farmhouse. She was worried for their safety. Seeing the
    shattered windows and partially caved-in roof, Anne Marie Broeckx

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    called for her parents. As they came out of the damaged house, her
    father shouted, ``My daughter, this is a great day for France.''
        As it turned out, it was a great day for Anne Marie as well. The
    liberating force of D-day included the young American soldier she would
    marry, an Army private who was fighting a half a mile away on Omaha
    Beach. It was another fine moment in Franco-American relations.
    [Laughter]
        In Amsterdam, a 14-year-old girl heard the news of D-day over the
    radio in her attic hiding place. She wrote in her diary, ``It still
    seems too wonderful, too much like a fairytale. The thought of friends
    in delivery fills us with confidence.'' Anne Frank even ventured to
    hope, ``I may yet be able to go back to school in September or
    October.''
        That was not to be. The Nazis still had about 50 divisions and more
    than 800,000 soldiers in France alone. D-day-plus-1 and D-day-plus-2 and
    many months of fierce fighting lay ahead, from Arnhem to Hurtgen Forest
    to the Bulge.
        Across Europe, Americans shared the battle with Britains, Canadians,
    Poles, Free French, and brave citizens from other lands taken back one
    by one from Nazi rule. In the trials and total sacrifice of the war, we
    became inseparable Allies. The nations that liberated a conquered Europe
    would stand together for the freedom of all of Europe. The nations that
    battled across the Continent would become trusted partners in the cause
    of peace. And our great Alliance of freedom is strong, and it is still
    needed today.
        The generation we honor on this anniversary, all the men and women
    who labored and bled to save this continent, took a more practical view
    of the military mission. Americans wanted to fight and win and go home.
    And our GIs had a saying: ``The only way home is through Berlin.'' That
    road to V-E Day was hard and long and traveled by weary and valiant men,
    and history will always record where that road began. It began here,
    with the first footprints on the beaches of Normandy.
        Twenty years after D-day, former President Eisenhower returned to
    this place and walked through these rows. He spoke of his joy of being a
    grandfather, and then he said, ``When I look at all these graves, I
    think of the parents back in the States whose only son is buried here.
    Because of their sacrifice, they don't have the pleasure of
    grandchildren. Because of their sacrifice, my grandchildren are growing
    up in freedom.''
        The Supreme Commander knew where the victory was won and where the
    greatest debt was owed. Always our thoughts and hearts were turned to
    the sons of America who came here and now rest here. We think of them as
    you, our veterans, last saw them. We think of men not far from boys who
    found the courage to charge toward death and who often, when death came,
    were heard to call, ``Mom,'' and ``Mother, help me.'' We think of men in
    the promise years of life, loved and mourned and missed to this day.
        Before the landing in Omaha, Sergeant Earl Parker of Bedford,
    Virginia, proudly passed around a picture of Danny, the newborn daughter he had never held. He told the
    fellows, ``If I could see this daughter of mine, I wouldn't mind
    dying.'' Sergeant Parker is remembered here at the Garden of the
    Missing. And he is remembered back home by a woman in her sixties who
    proudly shows a picture of her handsome, smiling young dad.
        All who are buried and named in this place are held in the loving
    memory of America. We pray in the peace of this cemetery that they have
    reached the far shore of God's mercy.
        And we still look with pride on the men of D-day, on those who
    served and went on. It is a strange turn of history that called on young
    men from the prairie towns and city streets of America to cross an ocean
    and throw back the marching, mechanized

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    evils of fascism. And those young men did it. You did it.
        That difficult summit was reached, then passed in 60 years of
    living. Now has come a time of reflection, with thoughts of another
    horizon and the hope of reunion with the boys you knew. I want each of
    you to understand, you will be honored ever and always by the country
    you served and by the nations you freed.
        When the invasion was finally over and the guns were silent, this
    coast, we are told, was lined for miles with the belongings of the
    thousands who fell. There were lifebelts and canteens and socks and K-
    rations and helmets and diaries and snapshots. And there were Bibles,
    many Bibles, mixed with the wreckage of war. Our boys had carried in
    their pockets the book that brought into the world this message: Greater
    love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.
        America honors all the liberators who fought here in the noblest of
    causes, and America would do it again for our friends. May God bless
    you.

    Note: The President spoke at 10:27 a.m. at the World War II Normandy
    American Cemetery and Memorial. In his remarks, he referred to President
    Jacques Chirac of France and his wife, Bernadette; and Gen. Richard B.
    Myers, USAF, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The transcript
    released by the Office of the Press Secretary also included the remarks
    of President Jacques Chirac. The D-Day National Remembrance Day
    proclamation of June 5 is listed in Appendix D at the end of this
    volume.