On Thursday evening, people from across the region gathered at the Fallen Heroes Memorial in Fredericksburg to remember those who took part in the D-Day invasion 80 years ago. This afternoon, we’ll have a full recap of the event. This morning, we are reprinting the comments Davis was asked to deliver for the occasion.
Winston Churchill planned to be at the D-Day Invasion aboard the HMS Belfast. On June 3, however, just three days before the invasion, King George VI finally convinced him to stay away.
Churchill, age 69 on the morning of June 6, reflected on yielding to the King’s request in Book Five of his history of the Second World War.
“A man who has to play an effective part in taking … grave and terrible decisions of war,” he said, “may need also the comfort that when sending so many others to their death he may share in a small way their risks…. I had seen many grievous errors made through the silly theory that valuable lives should not be endangered.”
In the 80 years since D-Day and the ensuing Battle of Normandy that together resulted in 73,000 Allied soldiers killed and another 153,000 wounded, far too many of us has succumb to the idea that our lives are too valuable to be endangered.
During World War II, some 45% of men born between 1911 and 1920 served in the military – about a quarter of them in combat. More striking is that 35% of men born between 1901 and 1910 served in the military – again, about a quarter of whom saw combat.
Today, America’s military is deployed around the globe at a time of unrest not seen since the Second World War. Russia is threatening to re-establish the failed empire of Stalin; China, having undermined freedoms in Hong Kong, now prepares to take Taiwan; and all the while Iran backs militant extremists across the Middle East and deep into Africa.
Our forces are spread across the globe, yet just one-half of 1% of America’s population serves in the armed forces.
That so very few of us bear all the sacrifice to protect democracy and freedom means that the vast majority of us has little understanding of the level of sacrifice that should be required of each of us to protect the very liberties that those who stormed the beaches of Normandy made possible 80 years ago.
I am ashamed to say that I am among those who has never served in uniform, nor stood in harms’ way in the service of liberty.
Rather, I – like so many — stand in the yawning gap between a generation in the 1940s that sacrificed their young and their old for an ideal; and a generation today in which the vast majority of us avoid danger, choosing instead to stand behind the few who volunteer to fight for liberty around the globe.
This evening, in a place on the opposite side of the planet, my son and his brothers in arms are fighting to protect us from enemies who wear not uniforms but ideologies. Enemies who are no less lethal than those who tried to stop the brave men who stormed the beaches of Normandy. And while there is no declared war, there are American men and women dying every year on foreign soil in defense of freedom.
My son and his bothers in arms are the few and the proud. They are United States Marines. And they stand and fight together with their brothers and sisters in arms in the Army, the Navy, and the Air Force.
Our words of thanks are insufficient in the face of the sacrifices they make.
They are insufficient to thank men like Robert Potts, who stormed those beaches on D-Day, and is here with us today at 102 years of age. And they are insufficient to thank those who rise and sleep today in hostile environments.
If all life is valuable, as I believe it is, then all of us must in some way – large or small – recommit ourselves to share in the risks that come with freedom.
In that way, and in that way alone, can we fully share in the American Experience as Mr. Potts did on June 6, 1944; as my son and his company of warriors is doing today; and as every man and woman who has understood and followed the call to defend freedom between D-Day and today.
Three weeks before D-Day, as Churchill was preparing himself to sail the English Channel with the invasion force, he said to General Eisenhower, “I am hardening on this operation.” By that, he meant he was committed to strike, even if everything was not perfect in the final hours.
May we honor those who have served and survived, and those who have served and fallen, by today hardening on our commitment to serve the cause of freedom by sharing in its risks.
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