Address at the 81st
D-Day Landings Anniversary at Normandy American Cemetery
delivered 6 June
2025, Colleville-sur-Mer, France
Thank you, Minister Lecornu -- Sebastien, Mr.
McCauley, Admiral Grady, Lieutenant King, and Chairman Garrett. Thank you to our
distinguished guests, none more distinguished than our veterans. Thank you for
being here today to commemorate the 81st anniversary of D-Day. It is a sheer
privilege to stand in this cemetery among heroes and before God, an incredible
monument to the sacrifices American warriors made on the beaches of Normandy.
As I stare at that flag, we are forever grateful to the French government for
dedicating this land as a resting place for our men. It's also an awe-inspiring
sight to see the American flag flying here above thousands of crosses and stars
as a tribute to our very best. As the former superintendent of this cemetery
used to say, there they are. Still serving their country. A living reminder.
Eighty-one years ago, Hitler thought his Atlantic Wall was impenetrable, many
agreed. He clearly had not met enough Americans. A more daring assault had never
been planned. The task was daunting, a frontal assault across the channel on
beaches and cliffs, strewn with obstacles and defended by heavily fortified
bunkers.
Our only advantage was that the enemy underestimated the strength of the Allied
war cause. The invasion would include brave troops from the U.S., Great Britain,
Canada, France, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Belgium, Norway, Poland,
Greece, and Holland. On the ground, the French Resistance covertly aided the
effort.
And as the troops loaded into their ships, planes, and landing craft, they
received copies of an order from General Eisenhower reminding them of the stakes
of their mission. I have a copy right here.
You are about to embark upon the great crusade toward which we have
striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes and
prayers of liberty loving people everywhere march with you.
In company
with our brave allies and brothers in arms on other fronts, you will bring
about the destruction of the German war machine, the elimination of Nazi
tyranny over the oppressed peoples of Europe and security for ourselves in a
free world. Your task will not be an easy one.
He ends by writing, "And let us all beseech the blessings of Almighty God upon
this great and noble undertaking."
Now that's a mission statement if I've ever heard one. Those words along with
ceaseless prayers to the Lord Almighty willed our troops as they pushed off into
dark and choppy waters.
They prayed. They smoked. They joked. They wrote home. They looked at photos.
They knew many of them would not make it out alive and they would have to rely
on each other to succeed or to just survive.
The assault began quietly before dawn on June the 6th with radio silence as
paratroopers and gliders landed in the early hours. These men flung themselves
into the abyss of night lit only by the fire of German tracers.
Later that morning, the greatest amphibious assault in the history of mankind
began in full force. Our men pushed through the waves and flung themselves upon
the sand. The courage it took to do this is unfathomable.
The first groups were decimated. Thousands of young men lost their lives, cut
down by the barrage of machine guns and mortars. But they never let up. Our
warriors never faltered, God at their backs. As they forced their way inland,
the Atlantic Wall began to crumble. It is these men and their bravery whom we
are here to celebrate and remember.
A generation of farmhands and city kids. Baseball players and shopkeepers. Big
towns, small towns, rich, poor, who were forged and hardened in the Great
Depression. Hard men, forged for hard times. Ordinary men, who mustered
extraordinary courage. While every one of the 9,000 Americans buried here are
heroes, three men here also received the Medal of Honor for their actions in the
invasion.
And as Sebastian mentioned, one of those was Brigadier General Theodore
Roosevelt Jr., the oldest man to land on D-Day at the age of 56. He had to
submit a written petition to receive permission because he had a heart condition
and arthritis. He had nothing to prove, but he could not stay back while his men
met their fate.
There were no other generals on the beach that day. When he landed far from his
objective, he simply said men will start the war from right here. He organized
the troops and made order out of chaos. A month later, his heart gave out, but
he had completed his mission, as did every soul buried under one of those
markers.
You see, war reveals the true character of men. The character of a people. Lead
from the front or capitulate and fall out. To walk over or run if you can,
carrying equipment over that open beach as shells and bullets thunder around you
again and again, I cannot imagine. Could you do that? Could I? Could we? As we
know, we have a number of these warriors with us here today.
These men, boys then, were part of those landing forces. They embody the warrior
ethos. We have many other men here today who served in France, and across the
world in that war. To that, I can simply say, gentlemen, thank you for your
service, for your sacrifice and for your bravery. That day and those days that
followed turned the tide of the war and history itself.
In the two months after the invasion, the Allies poured more than two million
troops through the hard-won opening in Normandy without Operation Overlord,
without the sacrifices of American, French, British and other Allied powers, we
would not have the free world. This day, June the 6th, is the price of freedom.
We remember the losses. We celebrate the victories. We rededicate ourselves to
the fight for liberty, security, and peace. And again, we should ask ourselves,
could I do what they did? Could you? Could we? Could our kids? Do we produce
such men? How do we produce such Americans? Our civilization today and going
forward must answer those questions.
You know, I wrote this speech before this morning, but this morning I got my
answer. This morning, I had a chance to do PT with Army Rangers on the beach, on
Omaha Beach, I got my answer to those questions. With the sun rising with the
Ranger regiment, yes, we do produce such men still, from far flung places
willing to traverse the entire globe to defend freedom.
I had a chance this morning to run with a young ranger whose grandfather was
liberated in the Philippines by the sixth Rangers. He joined and he didn't even
know that. The legacy of Americans around the world for freedom. As we ran on
that beach this morning at 6:30, as the sun was rising about the same time those
first landing crafts landed, didn't look much like a battlefield.
It looked like a beach. I ran over more than a few sandcastles. That's what
those men fought for. That we may turn scenes of death into scenes of life,
scenes of war into scenes of peace. Glorifying Almighty God with our lives and
living worthy of their sacrifice. That together our nations will be strong and
free.
Today, the United States and France again rallied together to confront such
threats. Because we strive for peace, we must prepare for war and hopefully
deter it. We must ensure that our children and our grandchildren know what these
men did, that they understand. I used to say, and it's a cozy thing to tell
ourselves, especially after World War II, that they fought so that their kids
and grandkids won't have to, and in some cases, that was true.
But in most cases, they fought, and we fight knowing that our kids and grandkids
will have to be willing to do the same as well because history is not over. Evil
has not been eradicated from the globe. Good men are still needed to stand up.
America will require such men. The world will require such men. And therefore,
we must teach our kids and grandkids to understand, to remember and to live
worthy.
Our world is a better place when Europe and America are strong, free, and
independent. France understands this well and so do the men buried here, and so
do the men sitting before me. Our nations together have endured a bond
intertwined by history and we share this hallowed ground underneath our feet
dedicated and consecrated by the blood of our heroes.
Our moment today is an echo. It's an echo of theirs and may we live worthy of
them. It is truly one of the honors of a lifetime to commemorate the sacrifices
of D-Day and celebrate the freedoms of our two nations. God bless you all and
may God bless our warriors.
