65th Anniversary of D-Day

On June 6th we commemorate the anniversary of D-Day, the Allied invasion of Normandy -- conveying our thanks to those who fought and died for the liberation of Europe, and the world, from the Nazis.

Many stories and reflections will be shared today. Here are just a few.

As remembered by Capt. John G. Burkhalter, former Miami minister and chaplain with the "Fighting First" division in France:

On one occasion we were near some farm houses and some large shells began to fall, so several of us near a stone barn dashed into it to get out of the way of shrapnel. Just inside was a mother hen covering her little chicks. When we hurried in she became frightened and fluffing her feathers rose up to protect her young. I looked at her and silently said, "No, mother hen, we are not trying to hurt you and your little family, we are trying to hurt each other."

Nobody can love God better than when he is looking death square in the face and talks to God and then sees God come to the rescue. As I look back through hectic days just gone by to that hellish beach I agree with Ernie Pyle, that it was a pure miracle we even took the beach at all." Yes, there were a lot of miracles on the beach that day. God was on the beach D-Day; I know He was because I was talking with Him.

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The horrors of that day are still vivid for the D-Day heroes. CNN talks with British veteran Frank Rosier:

Rosier told me that what he and the veterans discuss among themselves is very different to what is said in television interviews; but when pushed, he describes what it's like to kill another man.

"We could never get our fathers to talk about the first World War, because they were involved in close combat. And twice in the second World War it happened to me.

"I came face to face with a German, and I beat him to the draw. I killed him. I sat on the grass and was sick and I cried ... he was some mother's son."

Of the 800 men in Rosier's infantry, only five survived the war unharmed, "the rest were killed, missing or wounded."

The closest approximation of that fateful day, according to the testimony of many veterans, are from the initial 24-minute sequence of Stephen Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan. It prompted over 14,000 postings in internet chatrooms and obliged the Veteran's administration to set up a hotline (see footage here).

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President Ronald Reagan delivered one of his most memorable speeches of his life, speaking to veterans on the 40th anniversary of the D-Day:

The men of Normandy had faith that what they were doing was right, faith that they fought for all humanity, faith that a just God would grant them mercy on this beachhead or on the next. It was the deep knowledge -- and pray God we have not lost it -- that there is a profound, moral difference between the use of force for liberation and the use of force for conquest. You were here to liberate, not to conquer, and so you and those others did not doubt your cause. And you were right not to doubt. You all knew that some things are worth dying for. One's country is worth dying for, and democracy is worth dying for, because it's the most deeply honorable form of government ever devised by man. All of you loved liberty. All of you were willing to fight tyranny, and you knew the people of your countries were behind you.

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

[...]

Here, in this place where the West held together, let us make a vow to our dead. Let us show them by our actions that we understand what they died for. Let our actions say to them the words for which Matthew Ridgway listened: "I will not fail thee nor forsake thee." Strengthened by their courage, heartened by their valor, and borne by their memory, let us continue to stand for the ideals for which they lived and died.

And reflecting on the 60th anniversary of the invasion from his perspective as a German, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) conveyed his gratitude (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung):

We give thanks at this hour that this deliverance, in fact, took place. And not just those nations that suffered occupation by German troops, and were thus delivered over to Nazi terror, give thanks. We Germans, too, give thanks that by this action, freedom, law and justice would be restored to us. If nowhere else in history, here clearly is a case where, in the form of the Allied invasion, a justum bellum worked, ultimately, for the benefit of the very country against which it was waged.

Let us say it openly: These politicians took their moral ideas of state and right, peace and responsibility, from their Christian faith, a faith that had undergone the tests of the Enlightenment, and in opposing the perversion of justice and morality of the party-states, had emerged re-purified. They did not want to found a state upon religious faith, but rather a state informed by moral reason, yet it was their faith that helped them to raise up again a reason once distorted by, and held in thrall to ideological tyranny.