[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 38, Number 22 (Monday, June 3, 2002)]
[Pages 926-928]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks at a Memorial Day Ceremony in Colleville-sur-Mer, France

May 27, 2002

    Mr. President and Mrs. Chirac; Secretary Powell and Secretary 
Principi; members of the United States Congress; members of the American 
Armed Services; veterans, family members; fellow Americans and friends: 
We have gathered on this quiet corner of France as the sun rises on 
Memorial Day in the United States of America. This is a day our country 
has set apart to remember what was gained in our wars and all that was 
lost.
    Our wars have won for us every hour we live in freedom. Our wars 
have taken from us the men and women we honor today and every hour of 
the lifetimes they had hoped to live.
    This day of remembrance was first observed to recall the terrible 
casualties of the war Americans fought against each other. In

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the nearly 14 decades since, our Nation's battles have all been far from 
home. Here on the continent of Europe were some of the fiercest of those 
battles, the heaviest losses, and the greatest victories. And in all 
those victories, American soldiers came to liberate, not to conquer. The 
only land we claim as our own are the resting places of our men and 
women.
    More than 9,000 are buried here, and many times that number have--of 
fallen soldiers lay in our cemeteries across Europe and America. From a 
distance, surveying row after row of markers, we see the scale and 
heroism and sacrifice of the young. We think of units sustaining massive 
casualties, men cut down crossing a beach or taking a hill or securing a 
bridge. We think of many hundreds of sailors lost in their ships.
    The war correspondent Ernie Pyle told of a British officer walking 
across the battlefield just after the violence had ended. Seeing the 
bodies of American boys scattered everywhere, the officer said, in sort 
of a hushed eulogy spoken only to himself, ``Brave men, brave men.''
    All who come to a place like this feel the enormity of the loss. 
Yet, for so many, there is a marker that seems to sit alone. They come 
looking for that one cross, that one Star of David, that one name. 
Behind every grave of a fallen soldier is a story of the grief that came 
to a wife, a mother, a child, a family, or a town.
    A World War II orphan has described her family's life after her 
father was killed on a field in Germany. ``My mother,'' she said, ``had 
lost everything she was waiting for. She lost her dreams. There were an 
awful lot of perfect linen tablecloths in our house that never got used, 
so many things being saved for a future that was never to be.''
    Each person buried here understood his duty but also dreamed of 
going back home to the people and the things he knew. Each had plans and 
hopes of his own and parted with them forever when he died.
    The day will come when no one is left who knew them, when no visitor 
to this cemetery can stand before a grave remembering a face and a 
voice. The day will never come when America forgets them. And our Nation 
and the world will always remember what they did here and what they gave 
here for the future of humanity.
    As dawn broke during the invasion, a little boy in the village off 
of Gold Beach called out to his mother, ``Look, the sea is black with 
boats.'' Spread out before them and over the horizon were more than 
5,000 ships and landing craft. In the skies were some of the 12,000 
planes sent on the first day of Operation Overlord. The Battle of 
Normandy would last many days, but June 6th, 1944, was the crucial day. 
The late President Francois Mitterrand said that nothing in history 
compares to D-day. ``The 6th of June,'' he observed, ``sounded the hour 
when history tipped toward the camp of freedom.''
    Before dawn, the first paratroopers already had been dropped inland. 
The story is told of a group of French women finding Americans and 
imploring them not to leave. A trooper said, ``We're not leaving. If 
necessary, this is the place we die.''
    Units of Army Rangers on shore, in one of history's bravest 
displays, scaled cliffs directly in the gunfire, never relenting even as 
comrades died all around them. When they had reached the top, the 
Rangers radioed back the code for success, ``Praise the Lord.''
    Only a man who was there, charging out of a landing craft, can know 
what it was like. For the entire liberating force, there was only the 
ground in front of them--no shelter, no possibility of retreat. They 
were part of the largest amphibious landing in history and perhaps the 
only great battle in which the wounded were carried forward. Survivors 
remember the sight of a Catholic chaplain, Father Joe Lacey, lifting 
dying men out of the water and comforting and praying with them. Private 
Jimmy Hall was seen carrying the body of his brother, Johnny, saying, 
``He can't. He can't be dead. I promised Mother I'd look after him.''
    Such was the size of the Battle of Normandy: Thirty-eight pairs of 
brothers died in the liberation, including Bedford and Raymond Hoback of 
Virginia, both who fell on D-day. Raymond's body was never found. All he 
left behind was his Bible, discovered in the sand. Their mother asked 
that Bedford be buried here as well, in the place Raymond

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was lost, so her sons would always be together.
    On Memorial Day, America honors her own. Yet we also remember all 
the valiant young men and women from many Allied Nations, including 
France, who shared in the struggle here and in the suffering. We 
remember the men and women who served and died alongside Americans in so 
many terrible battles on this continent and beyond.
    Words can only go so far in capturing the grief and sense of loss 
for the families of those who died in all our wars. For some military 
families in America and in Europe, the grief is recent, with the losses 
we have suffered in Afghanistan. They can know, however, that the cause 
is just. And like other generations, these sacrifices have spared many 
others from tyranny and sorrow.
    Long after putting away his uniform, an American GI expressed his 
own pride and the truth about all who served, living and dead. He said, 
``I feel like I played my part in turning this from a century of 
darkness into a century of light.''
    Here where we stand today, the new world came back to liberate the 
old. A bond was formed of shared trial and shared victory. And a light 
that scattered darkness from these shores and across France would spread 
to all of Europe, in time turning enemies into friends and the pursuits 
of war into the pursuits of peace. Our security is still bound up 
together in a transatlantic alliance, with soldiers in many uniforms 
defending the world from terrorists at this very hour.
    The grave markers here all face west, across an ageless and 
indifferent ocean to the country these men and women served and loved. 
The thoughts of America on this Memorial Day turn to them and to all 
their fallen comrades in arms. We think of them with lasting gratitude. 
We miss them with lasting love, and we pray for them. And we trust in 
the words of the Almighty God which are inscribed in the chapel nearby: 
``I give unto them eternal life, that they shall never perish.''
    God bless.

Note: The President spoke at 2:20 p.m. in the Normandy American 
Cemetery. The Office of the Press Secretary also released a Spanish 
language transcript of these remarks.