Barack Obama Forty-Fourth President
(2009 to 2017)
Remarks at
D-Day 65th Anniversary Ceremony Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial
Normandy, France -- June 6, 2009
THE PRESIDENT: Good afternoon. Thank you,
President Sarkozy, Prime Minister Brown, Prime Minister Harper, and
Prince Charles for being here today. Thank you to our Secretary of
Veterans Affairs, General Eric Shinseki, for making the trip out
here to join us. Thanks also to Susan Eisenhower, whose grandfather
began this mission 65 years ago with a simple charge: "Ok, let's
go." And to a World War II veteran who returned home from this war
to serve a proud and distinguished career as a United States Senator
and a national leader: Bob Dole. (Applause.)
I'm not the first American President to come and mark this
anniversary, and I likely will not be the last. This is an event
that has long brought to this coast both heads of state and grateful
citizens; veterans and their loved ones; the liberated and their
liberators. It's been written about and spoken of and depicted in
countless books and films and speeches. And long after our time on
this Earth has passed, one word will still bring forth the pride and
awe of men and women who will never meet the heroes who sit before
us: D-Day.
Why is this? Of all the battles in all the wars across the span of
human history, why does this day hold such a revered place in our
memory? What is it about the struggle that took place on the sands a
few short steps from here that brings us back to remember year after
year after year?
Part of it, I think, is the size of the odds that weighed against
success. For three centuries, no invader had ever been able to cross
the English Channel into Normandy. And it had never been more
difficult than in 1944.
That was the year that Hitler ordered his top field marshal to
fortify the Atlantic Wall against a seaborne invasion. From the tip
of Norway to southern France, the Nazis lined steep cliffs with
machine guns and artillery. Low-lying areas were flooded to block
passage. Sharpened poles awaited paratroopers. Mines were laid on
the beaches and beneath the water. And by the time of the invasion,
ha
At dawn on June 6th, the Allies came. The best chance for victory
had been for the British Royal Air Corps to take out the guns on the
cliffs while airborne divisions parachuted behind enemy lines. But
all did not go according to plan. Paratroopers landed miles from
their mark, while the fog and clouds prevented Allied planes from
destroying the guns on the cliffs. So when the ships landed here at
Omaha, an unimaginable hell rained down on the men inside. Many
never made it out of the boats.
And yet, despite all of this, one by one, the Allied forces made
their way to shore -- here, and at Utah and Juno; Gold and Sword.
They were American, British, and Canadian. Soon, the paratroopers
found each other and fought their way back. The Rangers scaled the
cliffs. And by the end of the day, against all odds, the ground on
which we stand was free once more.lf a million Germans waited for
the Allies along the coast between Holland and northern France.
The sheer improbability of this
victory is part of what makes D-Day so memorable. It
also arises from the clarity of purpose with which this
war was waged.
We live in a world of competing beliefs and claims about
what is true. It's a world of varied religions and
cultures and forms of government. In such a world, it's
all too rare for a struggle to emerge that speaks to
something universal about humanity.
The Second World War did that. No man who
shed blood or lost a brother would say that war is
President
Barack Obama speaks during the ceremony marking the 65th
anniversary of the Allied D-Day landings in Normandy at
the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial in
Colleville sur Mer in Western France, Saturday, June 6,
2009. Official White House Photo by Chuck Kennedy
good. But
all know that this war was essential. For what we faced
in Nazi totalitarianism was not just a battle of
competing interests. The nations that joined together to
defeat Hitler's Reich were not perfect. They had made
their share of mistakes, had not always agreed with one
another on every issue. But whatever God we prayed to,
whatever our differences, we knew that the evil we faced
had to be stopped. Citizens of all faiths and of no
faith came to believe that we could not remain as
bystanders to the savage perpetration of death and
destruction. And so we joined and sent our sons to fight
and often die so that men and women they never met might
know what it is to be free.
In America, it was an endeavor that inspired a
nation to action. A President who asked his country to pray on D-Day
also asked its citizens to serve and sacrifice to make the invasion
possible. On farms and in factories, millions of men and women
worked three shifts a day, month after month, year after year.
Trucks and tanks came from plants in Michigan and Indiana, New York
and Illinois. Bombers and fighter planes rolled off assembly lines
in Ohio and Kansas, where my grandmother did her part as an
inspector. Shipyards on both coasts produced the largest fleet in
history, including the landing craft from New Orleans that
eventually made it here to Omaha.
But despite all the years of planning and preparation, despite the
inspiration of our leaders, the skill of our generals, the strength
of our firepower and the unyielding support from our home front, the
outcome of the entire struggle would ultimately rest on the success
of one day in June.
Lyndon Johnson once said that there are certain moments when
"�history and fate meet at a single time in a single place to shape
a turning point in man's unending search for freedom."
D-Day was such a moment. One newspaper noted that "we have come to
the hour for which we were born." Had the Allies failed here,
Hitler's occupation of this continent might have continued
indefinitely. Instead, victory here secured a foothold in France. It
opened a path to Berlin. It made possible the achievements that
followed the liberation of Europe: the Marshall Plan, the NATO
alliance, the shared prosperity and security that flowed from each.
It was unknowable then, but so much of the progress that would
define the 20th century, on both sides of the Atlantic, came down to
the battle for a slice of beach only six miles long and two miles
wide.
More particularly, it came down to the men who landed here -- those
who now rest in this place for eternity, and those who are with us
here today. Perhaps more than any other reason, you, the veterans of
that landing, are why we still remember what happened on D-Day.
You're why we keep coming back.
For you remind us that in the end, human destiny is not determined
by forces beyond our control. You remind us that our future is not
shaped by mere chance or circumstance. Our history has always been
the sum total of the choices made and the actions taken by each
individual man and woman. It has always been up to us.
You could have done what Hitler believed you would do when you
arrived here. In the face of a merciless assault from these cliffs,
you could have idled the boats offshore. Amid a barrage of tracer
bullets that lit the night sky, you could have stayed in those
planes. You could have hid in the hedgerows or waited behind the
seawall. You could have done only what was necessary to ensure your
own survival.
But that's not what you did. That's not the story you told on D-Day.
Your story was written by men like Zane Schlemmer of the 82nd
Airborne, who parachuted into a dark marsh, far from his objective
and his men. Lost and alone, he still managed to fight his way
through the gunfire and help liberate the town in which he landed --
a town where a street now bears his name.
It's a story written by men like Anthony Ruggiero, an Army Ranger
who saw half the men on his landing craft drown when it was hit by
shellfire just a thousand yards off this beach. He spent three hours
in freezing water, and was one of only 90 Rangers to survive out of
the 225 who were sent to scale the cliffs.
And it's a story written by so many who are no longer with us, like
Carlton Barrett. Private Barrett was only supposed to serve as a
guide for the 1st Infantry Division, but he instead became one of
its heroes. After wading ashore in neck-deep water, he returned to
the water again and again and again to save his wounded and drowning
comrades. And under the heaviest possible enemy fire, he carried
them to safety. He carried them in his own arms.
This is the story of the Allied victory. It's the legend of units
like Easy Company and the All-American 82nd. It's the tale of the
British people, whose courage during the Blitz forced Hitler to call
off the invasion of England; the Canadians, who came even though
they were never attacked; the Russians, who sustained some of the
war's heaviest casualties on the Eastern front; and all those French
men and women who would rather have died resisting tyranny than
lived within its grasp.
It is the memories that have been passed on to so many of us about
the service or sacrifice of a friend or relative. For me, it is my
grandfather, Stanley Dunham, who arrived on this beach six weeks
after D-Day and marched across Europe in Patton's Army. And it is my
great uncle who was part of the first American division to reach and
liberate a Nazi concentration camp. His name is Charles Payne, and
I'm so proud that he's with us here today.
I know this trip doesn't get any easier as the years pass, but for
those of you who make it, there's nothing that could keep you away.
One such veteran, a man named Jim Norene, was a member of the 502nd
Parachute Infantry Division of the 101st Airborne. Last night, after
visiting this cemetery for one last time, he passed away in his
sleep. Jim was gravely ill when he left his home, and he knew that
he might not return. But just as he did 65 years ago, he came
anyway. May he now rest in peace with the boys he once bled with,
and may his family always find solace in the heroism he showed here.
In the end, Jim Norene came back to Normandy for the same reason we
all come back. He came for the reason articulated by Howard Huebner,
another former paratrooper who is here with us today. When asked why
he made the trip, Howard said, "It's important that we tell our
stories. It doesn't have to be something big�just a little story
about what happened -- so people don't forget."
So people don't forget.
Friends and veterans, we cannot forget. What we must not forget is
that D-Day was a time and a place where the bravery and the
selflessness of a few was able to change the course of an entire
century. At an hour of maximum danger, amid the bleakest of
circumstances, men who thought themselves ordinary found within
themselves the ability to do something extraordinary. They fought
for their moms and sweethearts back home, for the fellow warriors
they came to know as brothers. And they fought out of a simple sense
of duty -- a duty sustained by the same ideals for which their
countrymen had once fought and bled for over two centuries.
That is the story of Normandy -- but also the story of America; of
the Minutemen who gathered on a green in Lexington; of the Union
boys from Maine who repelled a charge at Gettysburg; of the men who
gave their last full measure of devotion at Inchon and Khe San; of
all the young men and women whose valor and goodness still carry
forward this legacy of service and sacrifice. It's a story that has
never come easy, but one that always gives us hope. For as we face
down the hardships and struggles of our time, and arrive at that
hour for which we were born, we cannot help but draw strength from
those moments in history when the best among us were somehow able to
swallow their fears and secure a beachhead on an unforgiving shore.
To those men who achieved that victory 65 years ago, we thank you
for your service. May God bless you, and may God bless the memory of
all those who rest here. (Applause.)
