President Bush Commemorates Memorial Day at Normandy
Remarks by the President in Memorial Day Commemoration
The Normandy American Cemetery
Colleville-Sur-Mer, France
2:20 P.M. (Local)
PRESIDENT BUSH: 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 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. The 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 is 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 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 in 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."