Woke Up To Normandy 8th Anniversary Observance

[Kathianne]

I of course thought of my dad who was grievously wounded in 2nd or 3rd wave around 7am. President Macron summed up him, obviously many more-'They just did what they did, not talking about it much until about 30 years ago, suddenly those survivors started sharing their experiences. Truth is, I always understood what the US and allies did in WWII, even on D-Day, but it wasn't until the last few years of my dad's life that I really understood what the war had taken and given to him and so many others that served. I miss him and wish I'd said more when I had him.

Biden's speech started out good, but then turned political. I didn't notice any major flubs, but was thinking my own thoughts.

[Gunny]

I of course thought of my dad who was grievously wounded in 2nd or 3rd wave around 7am. President Macron summed up him, obviously many more-'They just did what they did, not talking about it much until about 30 years ago, suddenly those survivors started sharing their experiences. Truth is, I always understood what the US and allies did in WWII, even on D-Day, but it wasn't until the last few years of my dad's life that I really understood what the war had taken and given to him and so many others that served. I miss him and wish I'd said more when I had him.

Biden's speech started out good, but then turned political. I didn't notice any major flubs, but was thinking my own thoughts.

The highwater mark of the USA. When men were men and citizens were citizens and worked together toward the common cause of defeating evil. Paternal grandfather went ashore at Omaha Beach. That was one, hardass old man :)

[Mr. P]

I of course thought of my dad who was grievously wounded in 2nd or 3rd wave around 7am. President Macron summed up him, obviously many more-'They just did what they did, not talking about it much until about 30 years ago, suddenly those survivors started sharing their experiences. Truth is, I always understood what the US and allies did in WWII, even on D-Day, but it wasn't until the last few years of my dad's life that I really understood what the war had taken and given to him and so many others that served. I miss him and wish I'd said more when I had him.

Biden's speech started out good, but then turned political. I didn't notice any major flubs, but was thinking my own thoughts.

Without doubt, This thread should remain at the top of the forum for the rest of the day. and even longer! :saluting2:

[Kathianne]

Pretty sure this will put the thread at top for the rest of the night, into tomorrow! I have really liked reading Peggy for years, but Trump really gets to her, enough so that I think she'll vote for Biden! In spite of that, this column is very good and reminds me of why I've enjoyed her writings for a long time.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/reagan-at-pointe-du-hoc-40-years-later-f0c5a7f9?st=0lr1ps2sm14bkru&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink


OPINIONDECLARATIONS
Reagan at Pointe du Hoc, 40 Years Later
June 1984 was a tense and dangerous time in the Cold War, but domestic politics were sweeter than today.
Peggy Noonan
By
Peggy Noonan
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June 6, 2024 5:10 pm ET






President Ronald Reagan delivers a speech commemorating the 40th anniversary of D-Day in Normandy, France, June 6, 1984. PHOTO: ASSOCIATED PRESS
Simi Valley, Calif.


I was to write on something else this week but an event in California sent me back in time. Friends of Ronald Reagan gathered to mark the 40th anniversary of his speeches at Normandy (June 6, 1984), and the 20th anniversary of his death (June 5, 2004). The dates remind me that Reagan first burst on the American political scene with his “A Time for Choosing” speech in 1964, and announced to the nation that he was suffering from Alzheimer’s in 1994. Somehow years ending in 4 marked significant occurrences in his life. Because I have been reading a biography of Carl Jung, I wonder if this might be an expression of synchronicity, in which circumstances that seem meaningfully related have no obvious causal connection.


Many of those who worked or got their start in Reagan’s White House came—Haley Barbour, Condoleezza Rice—and others traveled far to show respect, including Carol Thatcher, daughter of Margaret, and Ben Mulroney, son of Brian. Historians came.


Prime Ministers Thatcher of Britain and Mulroney of Canada, Reagan, Pope John Paul II—that quartet did great work together, for the benefit of humanity.


We at the Reagan Library felt there was a time when politics was sweeter, when big things got said in gentle ways, when geniality was a virtue and not a political faux pas. That time included the summer of ’84 and a day in Normandy. To have been able to work on the president’s remarks there was a privilege, and the past few days reminded me of a comment Reagan made in conversation. Now and then at night, relaxing in the White House, he’d channel-surf and come upon a movie he’d starred in 40 years before. He’d have the oddest sensation—he said it was like seeing a son you’d forgotten you had. I thought of it because in the library’s materials to mark the anniversaries I saw pictures of myself in meetings with him 40 years ago, and thought: the daughter I forgot I had.


We felt, and feel, that Ronald Reagan was the last unambiguously successful American president. He walked in, in January 1981, saying he would do two big and unlikely things, one domestic and one in foreign affairs, and walked out in January 1989 having done them. He revitalized the U.S. economy after decades of drift and demoralization, and he defeated the Soviet Union, the Berlin Wall falling months after he left the presidency. He did a third thing he hadn’t promised. He changed the mood of the country. We’d been depressed since JFK’s assassination and Vietnam, since Nixon and Watergate. Reagan said no, we aren’t a spent force, we aren’t incapable, we’ve got all this energy and brains. We’ve got this, he said. We did.


When presidencies are huge they are clear and you don’t have to finagle around with vague or technical language to cite their achievements.


To the D-Day speech at Pointe du Hoc. There’s something I always want to say about it.


The speech was a plain-faced one. It was about what it was about, the valor shown 40 years before by the young men of Operation Overlord who, by taking the Normandy beaches, seized back the Continent of Europe.


But there was a speech within the speech, and that had to do with more-current struggles.


Reagan wished to laud the reunited U.S. Rangers before him, so he simply described what they’d done: “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 hardest of the invasion, to climb the cliffs to take out enemy guns.


“And the American Rangers began to climb.” They shot rope ladders, pulled themselves up. “When one Ranger fell, another would take his place.” Two hundred twenty five Rangers had come there. “After two days of fighting, only 90 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.”


The “boys,” in the front rows, began to weep. They had never in 40 years been spoken of in that way, their achievement described by an American president, who told all the world what they’d done. Nancy Reagan and others, as they looked at them, were moved, and their eyes filled. Reagan couldn’t show what he was feeling, he had to continue. But afterward, in the Oval Office, he told me of an old Ranger who, before the ceremony, saw some young U.S. Rangers re-enacting the climb, and the old vet joined in and made it to the top. Reagan’s eyes shined: “Boy, that was something.”


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The speech within the speech was about the crisis going on as Reagan spoke. The Western alliance was falling apart. Its political leaders were under severe pressure at home. British, West German and Italian peace movements had risen and gained influence in 1982 and 1983, pushing to stop the U.S.-Soviet arms race. The Soviets had placed SS-20 missiles in Eastern Europe. In response, in late 1983, the U.S. put Pershing II and cruise missiles in Western Europe. Arms talks continued but went nowhere, and the Soviets often walked out. In New York, a million antinuclear protesters had marched from Central Park to the United Nations. In Bonn, hundreds of thousands protesters took to the streets in what police called the largest demonstration since the end of the war.


It was one of the tensest moments of the Cold War.


Reagan hated nuclear weapons but believed progress couldn’t be wrung from the Russians with words and pleas. More was needed, a show of determination.


He understood the pressure the political leaders of the West were under, and at Pointe du Hoc he was telling them, between the lines: Hold firm and we will succeed.


That’s why he spoke at such length of all the Allied armies at D-Day, not only the Americans. It’s why he paid tribute to those armies’ valor—to remind current leaders what their ancestors had done. It’s why he talked about “the unity of the Allies.” “They rebuilt a new Europe together.”


He was saying: I know the pressure you’re under for backing me, but hold on. They pretty much did. And in the end the decisions of 1983 and ’84 led to the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, signed in 1987 by Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, a turning point in the Cold War.


If you hear that speech, be moved by the Rangers who climbed those cliffs and the country that sent them there. Care that Ronald Reagan became the first public person to capture and laud the greatest generation, but delicately, because it was his generation and he couldn’t self-valorize. (Yes, a sweeter time.) But he was telling the young: That guy you call grandpa, see him in a new way. See his whole generation for who they were.


And hear, too, a message that echoes down the generations: Good people with a great cause must stand together, grab that rope and climb, no matter what fire.