On June 6, 1984, Ronald Reagan stood on those steep, bleak cliffs of Normandy, speaking slowly of what happened 40 years prior, heroism of a kind seldom seen, making the Allied Victory in WWII possible. This week marks the 39-year anniversary of that 40-year anniversary. The day is worth retelling.
As Reagan stood with those in late life’s vigor who had summoned the courage to assault Normandy’s cliffs, overtake German gun emplacements, interlocking machine gun nests, he was emotional. What he said left a mark, still does. The anniversary’s anniversary is about celebrating courage – never forgetting.
With “the boys of Pointe du Hoc” before him, then in their 60s, he spoke directly – and to any who doubted the resolve of America to stand for freedom, fight for freedom, and whatever it took, win.
In June 1984, I was not there, but walked those desolate beaches in March the year before, trying to understand what it must have taken to scale those cliffs, confront those dug-in positions, come under withering machine gun fire, and – not stop. The whole thing – Operation Overlord – seemed surreal.
Even today, perhaps especially today – when we have a misplaced, disproportionate priority on group think and group identity, being personally offended by everything, a peculiar and unsustainable emphasis on self, and – worst of all – willingness to punish raw patriotism – Normandy is surreal.
Before turning to Reagan’s words, a president who understood, served, lived through this extraordinary time of great heroism and great loss, consider basic facts. What happened on June 6, 1944 had never happened before, and never happened again. It was an unimaginable gamble.
Two other major allied, amphibious landings had been attempted, one at Sicily, one at Dieppe. Dieppe had put more than 6,000 allied troops ashore, with the result that within 10 hours, more than 3600 were dead, wounded or captured. It failed. Sicily was a success, but at enormous cost, more than 7800 dead.
Now came Normandy, 14 nations, led by the United States – 160,000 men hitting five beaches on D-Day, a front of 50 miles, beaches that had to be linked. More than two million had landed by August. The assault – after surmounting beaches, cliffs, and hedgerows to Paris – produced a total of 124,394 American casualties, 20,668 dead. But “day one” on the beach – was a horror itself.
This emblem of freedom’s cost, this natural and cross-covered monument to human sacrifice in the name of what is right and good, necessary and costly, vital and easily forgotten – is why Reagan came.
And this column is thus about the underlying courage, but also about the celebration of courage – what Churchill called “the first of human qualities, because it is the quality that guarantees all others.” What Reagan did that day, and what we must do now is “remember to remember,” neither forgetting nor trivializing what amounted to the last full measure by those who made possible – our free lives.
To some, this idea will seem trite, old and worn, but it should not. This idea – that we must remember in detail and with personal investment those who invested their lives, risked and lost them for us, is vital.
So, on that day, Reagan came and spoke. My summary does not do justice to his presence. But he nailed it, celebrated what we need to remember even now, at the 40th of the 40th, because what he did we also must do, for Normandy and all battles that make now…now.
Said Reagan: “We’re here to mark that day in history when the Allied armies joined in battle to reclaim this continent to liberty.” He explained the “terrible shadow” under which Europe fell, and how “in Normandy the rescue began…Allies…fought against tyranny in a giant undertaking…unparalleled in human history.”
He detailed how, “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.”
He explained how they faced “enemy soldiers…shooting down…machineguns and…grenades,” yet “the American Rangers began to climb…” and “when one Ranger fell, another would take his place…225 came” and “two days…only 90 could still bear arms…”
He recognized those present. “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…end a war.”
Reagan quoted Spender’s poem, “You are men who in your lives fought for life…and left the vivid air signed with your honor…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.”
Key: We must embrace that loyalty and love, understand what the Boys of Pointe du Hoc fought for, remember to remember, then help others to. This is our cliff, our moment, and why we remember the anniversary of the anniversary – because remembering counts.
Robert Charles is a former Assistant Secretary of State under Colin Powell, former Reagan and Bush 41 White House staffer, attorney, and naval intelligence officer (USNR). He wrote “Narcotics and Terrorism” (2003), “Eagles and Evergreens” (2018), and is National Spokesman for AMAC.
