More pictures from my research trip to Normandy:
I’ve included speeches from President Clinton and President Reagan. Their words express so eloquently the emotion I experienced in Normandy. Listen to Barber Adagio for Strings while you read.
Today, the beaches
of Normandy are calm. If you walk these shores on a summer’s day, all you might
hear is the laughter of children playing in the sand, or the cry of seagulls
overhead, or perhaps the ringing of a distant church bell—the simple sounds of
freedom barely breaking the silence—peaceful silence, ordinary silence.
But on June 6,
1944 was the last ordinary day of the 20th
President
Ronald Reagan’s speech at
Pointe du Hoc June
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 camps, 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, 225 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...
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.
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| La Fiere |
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| La Fiere |
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| Angoville au Plain and Drop Zone D |
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| The stories of Medics Robert E. Wright and Kenneth J. Moore |
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| Pointe du Hoc |
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| Pointe du Hoc |
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| Utah Beach |
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| Higgins Boat Monument at Utah Beach |
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| Sainte-Mere-Eglise Stained Glass Window St. Michael, the patron saint Dedicated in 1972. It includes, among so many things, |
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