This week, I had the honor of visiting Normandy, France, with Young America’s Foundation. Led by combat veteran Lt. Col. Allen West, our cadre of student leaders walked the five beaches of Normandy, which were hallowed 82 years ago by Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower’s soldiers, sailors, and airmen.
After commemorating the anniversary of the D-Day landings, and as we part with many of their last witnesses, it behooves Americans to reflect on what those young men did and why it is still of the highest consequence to us.
By the time the Western Allies were ready to commence the liberation of the Continent, on June 6, 1944, France had been under Nazi occupation for just shy of four years. The Germans had built a fearsome line of dug-in fortifications, bolstered by artillery and guarded by the remnants of the Luftwaffe: the Atlantic Wall.
To free Europe, it was necessary to form an amphibious force—the largest the world had ever seen—and launch it directly at this deadly bulwark.
It’s one thing to read about this operation. It’s quite another to walk the hundreds of yards down Omaha Beach and see how open and vulnerable the landing ground was.
To feel the English Channel freezing your feet and weighing down your clothes, and to imagine it reddened with blood and overturning the reinforcements.
TRENDING ARTICLES
To look at the sheer cliffs at Pointe du Hoc, and to picture machine gunners picking off your buddies as you all realize the ladders you brought were too short.
To see the 20-foot bomb craters still marking the land above the coast.
Who were the men who endured this? And why did they?
These men stood to sacrifice some of the highest blessings of life—youth, health, home, family—and they knew it all too well. Nothing shows this better than a letter from Rear Adm. Don Moon, the commander of Assault Force “U” for Normandy, to his wife and children, dated June 2, which is now visible in the museum above Utah Beach.
Moon professes courage: “When the time comes I shall carry the country’s banner high and apply all power to the enemy’s defeat.” But he plans for the worst.
He tells his wife: “I know that the world can hold no greater treasure than the love, affection, and companionship you have showered upon me. To you in case of my non-return, I bequeath the problems and the joys of bringing our darlings to manhood and womanhood in the way you and I think they should be raised.”
He expresses his wishes for each of his children in turn. He hopes that they would develop “virtue and kindness” and “strength of character.”
Like John Adams, who once resolved to “study Politicks and War that my sons may have liberty to study Mathematicks and Philosophy … in order to give their Children a right to study Painting, Poetry, Musick,” Moon, facing possible death in war, encourages his son David in “the development of his talents of mimicry and acting if he feels this could be his calling.”
Eisenhower’s men knew that if they did not go, they—and the world—would lose something even more precious than their personal blessings of home and family: a Western civilization that recognizes the God-given dignity of every human person.
Rising high over Gold Beach are stirring symbols of this civilization: a Crucifix and a statue of the Blessed Virgin. Likewise, Juno Beach bears the Cross of Lorraine, a symbol of free France and of its foundation.
With such strength emboldening them, the men who stormed the beaches could say, in the words of one veteran of Gold Beach: “I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.”
For thousands, this dedication proved fatal. Not far from the road to Omaha Beach, “Avenue de Bedford Virginie U.S.A.,” is a memorial to the community in America which took the highest losses at D-Day.
The images of these “Bedford Boys” are sobering: 19 photographs, all bearing the same death date, June 6, 1944. Most of the men were in their early twenties.
The French at Normandy have not forgotten what these men did. Au contraire, driving through the region, one might think they had all personally experienced the liberation.
Allied flags adorn streets, shop windows, and private homes in villages and farmland alike. Fresh roses and poppies cover the ground in front of memorials and graves.
As a visiting American, the most beautiful moment came as I walked slowly through the American cemetery, surrounded by the graves of 9,389 Americans who died to free France. Hearing a French mother hush her young daughter, then watching hundreds fall silent as the American flag was lowered and Taps was played, I fought tears.
Particularly now, when personal memories of the Second World War are quickly fading, we in America must take a cue from the pious people of Normandy.
We must remember the liberators.
In our own day, many are being deceived by the same lies that led to the rise of fascism in Europe: Men and women are again listening to demagogues who exalt omnicompetent government and subordinate free thought and independent churches to state-sanctioned notions of morality. Some today even echo the despicable and irrational hatred of Jewish people that led to the evil of the Holocaust.
Everyone wants a standard around which he can rally. Rail as we might against the false standard of deconstruction, if we do not replace it with the memory of our heroes, the flame of liberty, which they kept burning at the price of so much blood, will not outlive them.
Read the first chapter of The Woketopus right now for FREE
Today, even with President Trump’s victory, leftist elites have their tentacles in every aspect of our government.
The Daily Signal’s own Tyler O’Neil exposes this leftist cabal in his new book, The Woketopus: The Dark Money Cabal Manipulating the Federal Government.
In this book, O’Neil reveals how the Left’s NGO apparatus pursues its woke agenda, maneuvering like an octopus by circumventing Congress and entrenching its interests in the federal government.
You can read the first chapter of this new book for FREE in this eBook, The Woketopus: Chapter One using the secure link below.
TRENDING ARTICLES
The Daily Signal depends on the support of readers like you.
RELATED ARTICLES
Don’t miss the
Don’t miss the signal
