On the 70th anniversary of D-Day, President Barack Obama stood a few yards from what once were bloody shores and declared that the fabric of America can be learned from the sacrifices made that day.
“America’s claim, our commitment to liberty, our claim to equality, our claim to freedom and the inherent dignity of every human being, that claim is written on the blood of these beaches,” Obama said. “And it will endure for eternity.”
More than 10,000 service members, veterans, dignitaries and history lovers gathered at the American cemetery at Omaha Beach on Friday morning to remember a turning point in World War Two and in history, when, as Obama put it, Omaha became “democracy’s beachhead.”
There are not many left who were here on that day, and fewer still capable of a transatlantic trip. Obama singled out three men in attendance who were part of the invasion as he stood before dozens who were seated on the stage behind him.
“Whenever the world makes you cynical, whenever you doubt that courage and goodness is possible, stop and think of these men,” Obama said.
It wasn’t easy. Obama pointed out that the Americans did not achieve their objectives in the first hours as Omaha was lost before it was won.
“In this age of instant commentary, the invasion would have swiftly and roundly been declared, as it was by one officer, ‘a debacle,’” Obama said. “But a race to judgment would not have taken into account the courage of free men.”
He looked out upon rows of gravestones marking 9,387 American dead, including some 200 from Georgia. America took no land, he pointed out, when its World War Two victory was done — except to bury our dead and station the troops who remained. Obama quoted a Frenchman as the U.S. troops left Europe in 1945 saying “we will take care of the fallen as if their tombs were our children’s. And the people of France, you have kept your word like the true friends you are.”
Of the 160,000 troops who landed on D-Day, 73,000 were American. Obama also plans to attend an afternoon international rememberance up the road at Sword Beach, scheduled to be attended by the Queen of England.
French President Francois Hollande joined the Omaha Beach ceremony and was to host a luncheon of world leaders in nearby Benouville.
When the two presidents landed at Omaha Beach, they were greeted by former Georgia Democratic U.S. Sen. Max Cleland, who now oversees the Omaha cemetery along with 23 others on foreign soil as the head of the American Battle Monuments Commission.
Among the American VIPs who made the trip was U.S. Rep. Hank Johnson, a Democrat who — like Cleland — calls Lithonia home.
They came to a Normandy festooned with American flags alongside French ones, with re-enactors cruising the narrow roads in 1940s Jeeps. And a people welcoming it all.
“They were our liberators,” Hollande said. “France will never forget what it owes to the United States of America.”
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