Text 20642, 121 rader
Skriven 2006-06-07 02:46:05 av Ed Hulett (1:123/789.0)
  Kommentar till text 20641 av EARL CROASMUN (1:275/311)
Ärende: Today
=============
On Tue, 06 Jun 2006 23:13:56 -0400, EARL CROASMUN -> All wrote:

 EC> A few words from Ronald Reagan, delivered twenty-two years ago today,
 EC> concerning events sixty-two years ago today.  And Charles was there to
 EC> hear it in person.
 EC> -----

 EC> We're here to mark that day in history when the Allied armies joined in
 EC> battle to reclaim this continent to liberty.  For four long years, much
 EC> of Europe had been under a terrible shadow. Free nations had fallen,
 EC> Jews cried out in the camps, millions cried out for liberation. Europe
 EC> was enslaved, and the world prayed for its rescue. here in Normandy the
 EC> rescue began. Here the Allies stood and fought against tyranny in a
 EC> giant undertaking unparalleled in human history.

 EC> We stand on a lonely, windswept point on the northern shore of France.
 EC> The air is soft, but forty years ago at this moment, the air was dense
 EC> with smoke and the cries of men, and the air was filled with the crack
 EC> of rifle fire and the roar of cannon. At dawn, on the morning of the 6th
 EC> of June 1944, 225 Rangers jumped off the British landing craft and ran
 EC> to the bottom of these cliffs. Their mission was one of the most
 EC> difficult and daring of the invasion: to climb these sheer and desolate
 EC> cliffs and take out the enemy guns. The Allies had been told that some
 EC> of the mightiest of these guns were here and they would be trained on
 EC> the beaches to stop the Allied advance.

 EC> The Rangers looked up and saw the enemy soldiers on the edge of the
 EC> cliffs shooting down at them with machine guns and throwing grenades.
 EC> And the American Rangers began to climb. They shot rope ladders over the
 EC> face of these cliffs and began to pull themselves up. When one Ranger
 EC> fell, another would take his place. When one rope was cut, a Ranger
 EC> would grab another and begin his climb again. They climbed, shot back,
 EC> and held their footing. Soon, one by one, the Rangers pulled themselves
 EC> over the top, and in seizing the firm land at the top of these cliffs,
 EC> they began to seize back the continent of Europe. Two hundred and
 EC> twenty-five came here. After two days of fighting only ninety could
 EC> still bear arms.

 EC> Behind me is a memorial that symbolizes the Ranger daggers that were
 EC> thrust into the top of these cliffs. And before me are the men who put
 EC> them there.

 EC> These are the boys of Pointe du Hoc. These are the men who took the
 EC> cliffs. These are the champions who helped free a continent. These are
 EC> the heroes who helped end a war.

 EC> Gentlemen, I look at you and I think of the words of Stephen Spender's
 EC> poem. You are men who in your "lives fought for life...and left the
 EC> vivid air signed with your honor."

 EC> Forty summers have passed since the battle that you fought here. You
 EC> were young the day you took these cliffs; some of you were hardly more
 EC> than boys, with the deepest joys of life before you. Yet you risked
 EC> everything here. Why? Why did you do it? What impelled you to put aside
 EC> the instinct for self-preservation and risk your lives to take these
 EC> cliffs? What inspired all the men of the armies that met here? We look
 EC> at you, and somehow we know the answer. It was faith, and belief; it was
 EC> loyalty and love.

 EC> The men of Normandy had faith that what they were doing was right, faith
 EC> that they fought for all humanity, faith that a just God would grant
 EC> them mercy on this beachhead or on the next. It was the deep knowledge
 EC> -- and pray God we have not lost it -- that there is a profound moral
 EC> difference between the use of force for liberation and the use of force
 EC> for conquest. You were here to liberate, not to conquer, and so you and
 EC> those others did not doubt your cause. And you were right not to doubt.

 EC> You all knew that some things are worth dying for. One's country is
 EC> worth dying for, and democracy is worth dying for, because it's the most
 EC> deeply honorable form of government ever devised by man. All of you
 EC> loved liberty. All of you were willing to fight tyranny, and you knew
 EC> the people of your countries were behind you.

 EC> Something else helped the men of D-Day: their rock hard belief that
 EC> Providence would have a great hand in the events that would unfold here;
 EC> that God was an ally in this great cause. And so, the night before the
 EC> invasion, when Colonel Wolverton asked his parachute troops to kneel
 EC> with him in prayer he told them: Do not bow your heads, but look up so
 EC> you can see God and ask His blessing in what we're about to do. Also
 EC> that night, General Matthew Ridgway on his cot, listening in the
 EC> darkness for the promise God made to Joshua: "I will not fail thee nor
 EC> forsake thee."

 EC> We in America have learned bitter lessons from two World Wars: It is
 EC> better to be here ready to protect the peace, than to take blind shelter
 EC> across the sea, rushing to respond only after freedom is lost. We've
 EC> learned that isolationism never was and never will be an acceptable
 EC> response to tyrannical governments with an
 EC> expansionist intent.

 EC> We are bound today by what bound us forty years ago, the same loyalties,
 EC> traditions, and beliefs. We are bound by reality. The strength of
 EC> America's allies is vital to the United States, and the American
 EC> security guarantee is essential to the continued freedom of Europe's
 EC> democracies. We were with you then; we are with you now. Your hopes are
 EC> our hopes, and your destiny is our destiny.

 EC> Here, in this place where the West held together, let us make a vow to
 EC> our dead. Let us show them by our actions that we understand what they
 EC> died for. Let our actions say to them the words for which Matthew
 EC> Ridgway listened: "I will not fail thee nor forsake thee."

 EC> Strengthened by their courage, heartened by their valor, and borne by
 EC> their memory, let us continue to stand for the ideals for which they
 EC> lived and died.

 EC> Thank you very much, and God bless you all.

This really puts 6/6/06 in perspective.

Ed

-- 
Knowledge is proud that he has learned so much; Wisdom is humble that he knows
no more. -- William Cowper

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