D-Day Plus 80 Years : Continuing to Honor Their Sacrifices
WASHINGTON, D.C. – The nation was newly at war on Memorial Day weekend in 2004, an uncertain era inaugurated by the terrorist attacks of September 11. Still, on May 29, the sitting president of the United States and two of his predecessors sat in the open air on the National Mall, before a vast crowd of U.S. military veterans and their families, to dedicate the National World War II Memorial.
George W. Bush declared it a day of “remembrance and celebration,” and the 1940s big band music quickly had the crowd in the mood – as Glenn Miller might say. It was a clear day with the sun gleaming off the memorial’s tranquil pool. If that pool evoked the oceans the veterans had crossed when they were strapping young men – many of them leaving home for the first time – to defend democracy itself, those were thoughts kept quietly to themselves.
I was in the crowd as a reporter for Newhouse News Service, then a national wire service serving newspapers from coast to coast. I am also a Baby Boomer, born 14 years after the war ended, which means I grew up with these veterans – the men and women who won the war. They were parents and grandparents in my family and in the families I knew.
They were movie stars like Jimmy Stewart, future presidents like John F. Kennedy and Gerald R. Ford, and ordinary yet heroic men like my great-uncle, Louie Garcia, who joined the Marines at 20 and served in the Pacific Theater during the war – and then returned home to work for Ford Motor Company and raise a family. I took it for granted that the greatest generation, as former NBC anchor Tom Brokaw called them, would always be with us. Yet that day, the passage of time was clear. Row upon row of veterans gave the impression of one last great military formation. But look closely and many of them were in wheelchairs, using walkers or canes.
There was a growing sense of urgency to voice a nation’s gratitude – and to build a memorial while veterans could still see it. Brokaw spoke at the dedication, as did actor Tom Hanks, whose starring role in “Saving Private Ryan” gave the veterans’ descendants a startlingly realistic depiction of D-Day’s horrors. Republican Sen. Bob Dole of Kansas, a Bronze Star recipient, was there. A 2nd lieutenant in the U.S. Army’s storied 10th Mountain Division, Dole lost full use of both arms to German machine guns. His service as national chair of the World War II Memorial Campaign helped propel an idea into the memorial situated between the Lincoln Memorial and Washington Monument.
Because of a chance encounter later that afternoon, I think of that day and those veterans every June 6 as we mark another year that puts time and distance between us and D-Day – the harrowing Allied invasion of Normandy that gave hope to freedom-loving people everywhere. Each day after D-Day, when so much sacrifice was still required, was called “D-Day plus one” –two, three, and so on. This year is now D-Day plus 80 years. It’s worth remembering – in full – the words that Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower issued in his June 6, 1944, Order of the Day, addressed to 175,000 men of the Allied Expeditionary Force before their assault by land, air, and sea. The order is dated “Supreme Headquarters.”
Soldiers, Sailors, and Airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Force!
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 hope 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. Your enemy is well trained, well equipped and battle-hardened. He will fight savagely.
But this is the year 1944! Much has happened since the Nazi triumphs of 1940-41. The United Nations have inflicted upon the Germans great defeats, in open battle, man-to-man. Our air offensive has seriously reduced their strength in the air and their capacity to wage war on the ground. Our Home Fronts have given us an overwhelming superiority in weapons and munitions of war, and placed at our disposal great reserves of trained fighting men. The tide has turned! The free men of the world are marching together to Victory!
I have full confidence in your courage, devotion to duty and skill in battle. We will accept nothing less than full Victory!
Good luck! And let us beseech the blessing of Almighty God upon this great and noble undertaking.
Ike’s own future would take him to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, where he’d preside over a post-war nation so prosperous that it’s recalled with nostalgia and yearning. But the commander in chief he served would not live to see victory.
“One of the saddest days of the war came just as it was ending when the casualty notice in the morning paper began with the name Franklin D. Roosevelt, commander-in-chief,” President Bush noted. His own father, George H.W. Bush, the 41st president of the United States, sat listening next to his successor, Bill Clinton. In 1944, as a young naval aviator, George Bush flew 58 combat missions, earning him the Distinguished Flying Cross.
“When it mattered most,” George W. Bush continued, “an entire generation of Americans showed the finest qualities of our nation, and of humanity.” Of FDR, Bush said, “From his words, we know that he understood the character of the American people.” He quoted one of his iconic radio addresses: “We have been described,” Roosevelt said of America’s enemies, “as a nation of weaklings, playboys. Let them tell that to General MacArthur and his men. Let them tell that to the boys in the flying fortresses. Let them tell that to the Marines!
The Americans who served, Bush went on, “came from city streets and prairie towns, from public high schools and West Point. They were a modest bunch and still are. … Millions of us are very proud to call them Dad.”
And then the president made this declaration:
“At this place, at this memorial, we acknowledge a debt of long standing to an entire generation of Americans. Those who died, those who fought and worked and grieved, and went on. They saved our country and thereby saved the liberty of mankind.”
They were words that deeply touched those who heard them. I know this because when I walked on the Mall after the ceremony concluded, I heard the same two words being said over and over to the aged warriors among us. I heard myself say them, quite unexpectedly. I’d boarded a shuttle van carrying veterans around the Mall. I was hoping – in reporter shorthand – to gather “color” for my story about the memorial’s dedication.
Seated near the front, I was looking out the window at a sea of veterans when I heard words from behind that prompted me to turn around. “Were you at D-Day?” I asked the veteran in the seat next to mine. He simply nodded – yes. Tears welled in my eyes. In his, too. And in the eyes of his family, who were looking on.
Holding his gaze, I said, “Thank you.”
