[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 40, Number 24 (Monday, June 14, 2004)]
[Pages 1032-1035]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
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. 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.''

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    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 5th 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 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.

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    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 60s 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 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 Normandy American 
Cemetery. 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.

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