Er... shouldn't that be "Omaha Beach?"

My dad was in the second wave at Normandy - the ones who waded through the bodies of the first round. He is 87 years old and to this day no one can wake him up from his sleep without him grabbing for his now imaginary rifle. The scars of war never go away.

Gordon Brown made the same mistake, calling it "Obama Beach". Prince Charles looked up when he did.

Here's more on Obama Beach, the real thing:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/why-truth-is-a-casualty-of-war-in-the-battle-of-obama-beach-1694529.html

mhr: don't be a dick.

Wow. Best president ever... or at least for a long time.

And now watch the all the corporate talking heads who are infected with rabies in their soul find 'something' to criticize obama over ...

Another great speech was delivered today in Wichita, Kansas.

Dr. George Tiller's eldest daughter started with
"You are my Dad's greatest living masterpiece"..."

and then got better and better,IMHO.

You can go to the Wichita Eagle for the rest of it.

to jen f and her dad:

thank you

mhr: don't be a dick.

Didn't you mean, 'Sun: don't come up'?

Obama: What is it about what happened on this streetch of beach .. .

Duh. It was the last time America took a stand against preemptive war, illegal occupation and enhanced interrogation techniques.

It was the last good war, and now we're operating on the wrong side of history.

Even Barack Obama can't use D-Day as the lipstick on the pig of Iraq and Guantanamo.

And the 101st Chairborne division will blame Mr. Norene's death on Obama in 5...4...3...

The US Coast Guard escorted and crewed Landing Craft and rescued Allied personnel during the Normandy invasion.

Read about Rescue Flotilla One at:

http://notionscapital.wordpress.com/2009/06/06/d-days-matchbox-fleet/

Mike Licht: most excellent, dude.

As if...

The blackbird
lives in a
country like
a rose in the
dreamland,
and even a
pleasure declares
in a moment
that intention
of love.

Francesco Sinibaldi

“The Longest Day”
June 6, 1944

On those shores of Normandy
Those sixty-five years ago
There was an amphibious landing
The largest, this World would know.

Many thousands stormed those beaches
Although many, never reached the land
Washed upon, foreign sands by waves
Where, all those Heroes took their stand.

Named, Omaha, Sword and Juno
Gold and Utah, where they died
It was our foothold there in Europe
Which would not, could not, be denied.

To liberate those Countries occupied
By that terrible, Nazi war machine
Where People sought their Freedom
From the tyranny they had seen.

It made Hitler change his plans
To invade the English countryside
There’s no doubt it dashed his hopes
To, spread his rule, worldwide.

It began the march through France
Towards the Battle of Berlin
To the end of such an evilness
We hope, to never see again.

Today we Honor those who Served
All those dead and those alive
Although their numbers are dwindling
Our memories of them, will survive.

Four hundred twenty-five thousand souls
Both sides lost, before it was all done
In the Battle of Normandy
That began, that day, the “longest” one.

Del “Abe” Jones
06.06.2009

As a historian, I have immense respect and empathy for those who died at Normandy, and elsewhere, but to boil down the 20th century to six miles of beach is simply counterfactual and silly... hyperbole does nothing to honor vets.

Thank you Cornfields.

Apparently no one west of Moscow has ever heard of the siege of Stalingrad or defense of Moscow.

Obama is a great political opportunist and delivers a great speech. He knows how to boost his own popularity by pressing those patriotic buttons inside of all of us.

I wish he would apply the same flair to upholding the rule of law.

All my mother's friend knew was that her husband was stationed in England and she was Very Pregnant. On the day she gave birth to a little girl, the newspaper's headline screamed D-Day! As they knew it had just happened hours earlier.
Luckily, the military knew she was expecting and her husband was put in one of the later waves to hit the beaches in France. He found out he had a little girl SIX weeks later, when the Red Cross finally caught up with his group of men.
It was just what he did during the war. And he rarely mentioned it.
Thank you to all those who were there, and thank you to the families who sacrificed so much. You know who you are.

I'm beginning to wonder how low long it will be before school kids are studying Obama's speeches in school.

As a commemorative speech it was powerfully eloquent and it was expressed in simple language.

Are speechwriters eligible for Pullitzers?

I can picture middle school ObamaSlams where kids compete in reciting various speeches. (teleprompter optional ;-) )

Normandy was a sobering yet thrilling place to visit. To walk in the cemetery, which is US soil and see the headstones (all but one killed in WWII) and then to drive the back roads and lanes of the country was stunning. All of the roads are named for Americans who died in the invasion and aftermath.
Obama's ability to deliver a speech continues to amaze, criminy it's nice to have an adult at the helm.

(Teddy Roosevelt's son, Quentin, killed in WWI)

Unlike Obama's outstanding, ground-breaking speech in Cairo, I found this speech fairly disappointing. It wasn't bad, but nor was it particularly noteworthy. Too much of the speech was the usual mishmash of well worn descriptions of the fighting, tired platitudes about the bravery of the soldiers, and superficial lessons about how it shaped the world... all of which are fine topics, but rather deserving of more than a casual, prosaic mention.

A speech at Normandy would be a great place to talk up the importance of trade, diplomacy and military cooperation between America and Europe.

Suggesting the freedoms, security, and wealth that Europe enjoys today started when the first American boots touched the ground helps to marginalize further those on the Right who have turned everything 'French' into a punchline about cowardice or socialism (and you'll be hearing it dragged out again just as soon as the push for health care picks back up). (Like Lincoln's speech at Gettysberg) Europe's birth of freedom began on the beaches of Normandy.

Republican French jokes undermine the value of the sacrifice of those men. Conversely, let the Europeans who are quick to condescend to Americans come to the beaches of Normandy.

Major Winters (portrayed in Band of Brothers) said that at the end of D-Day he prayed to God, asking for nothing more from life that if he survived the war that he be able to return to his home and live a peaceful life. He said his prayer was answered. The greatest monument to their achievements are the generations of Americans and Europeans who have enjoyed the freedoms and prosperity that their sacrifices won.

And/or Obama could have mentioned how America's commitment to Western Europe helped to secure those freedoms throughout the Cold War to give renewed meaning of those sacrifice that people today could better appreciate.

And so on. Again, not bad, but certainly not great.

jen f.: "My dad was in the second wave at Normandy - the ones who waded through the bodies of the first round. He is 87 years old and to this day no one can wake him up from his sleep without him grabbing for his now imaginary rifle. The scars of war never go away."

God bless your father and his comrades, who strode ashore that day to finally confront direstly and vanquish a modern-day evil.

My great-uncle served as a gunnery officer on the Royal Navy battlecruiser HMS Belfast, whose captain that morning noted that the initial wave of U.S. ground forces at Omaha Beach were foundering under the withering German fire.

On his own volition, the captain directed his ship and two British light cruisers and several destroyers to close as near the Omaha landing beaches as possible to provide vital close-quarter gunnery support for their American allies. RAF Typhoon fighters also moved in to target and silence German machine gun bunkers that were enveloping the U.S. troops pinned against the bluffs.

The British sortie at Omaha Beach successfully drew heavy German shore fire away from the landing areas at a most critical juncture, when the decisive second and third waves of U.S. Higgins Boats (landing craft) were commencing their final approach, and helped the beleaguered American forces to finally secure their tenuous toehold.

On this 65th anniversary of D-Day, we should also remember and pay homage to our brave allies who crossed the English Channel with us on June 6, 1944. We literally could not have done it without them.

While not to take away or diminish the American effort, it's nevertheless well worth noting that over half the initial D-Day assault force on June 6 were comprised of British and Canadian troops, and the Royal Navy accounted for over half the invasion's naval and logistical support.

This included the deployment of the ingenious "Mulberry", the large British-designed artificial harbor and breakwater system constructed by Royal Marine engineers right on Omaha Beach itself in less than 48 hours after the invasion, through which over 300,000 American troops, tanks and armored personnel carriers, equipment and supplies would subsequently be landed over the course of the week immediately following the initial landings.

Mulberry proved more necessary than thought because of the over-ambitious (read Monty) plan to seize Caen. On June 19, a storm destroyed "A" and because Caen took a month they were very useful.

a sole focus on Normandy skews the record sharply in terms of the overwhelming role (90% of the forces involved) of the Red Army and the events on the eastern front in the defeat of Nazi Germany.

pls writes that no one west of Moscow has heard of Stalingrad.

Yesterday, during the D-Day Marathon on the Military Channel, they did repeat the British produced "Stalingrad". It was followed by a repeat of an excellent study of Normandy veterans returning to France to walk through many different points of battle from those first days of the invasion. When this was produced, World War II vets were dying at a rate of a 1,000 per day. Fewer and fewer are able to make the sojourn to those hallowed fields and hedgerows.

Obama seems to always mean well, but his speeches contain strange inaccuracies. The D-Day speech is an example. He spoke about the "improbability" that the invasion was going to succeed. Really? The Allies did a great job of deceiving the Germans about the landing spot, and the total casualties were actually much less that anticipated. Was success really so unlikely? Again, Obama's intentions are generally in the right place, but since I'm very interested in history, these inaccuracies bother me.

shoebeacon, yes, but today let's focus on the western front. Donald, thanks for the recognition of your allies. It get so often forgotten. Certainly your media people (cough, Jack Cafferty, cough) don' t know.

Mr. Obama is the first American president in my lifetime (I'm in my mid forties) whose speeches can make me cry.

Lee, yes, it was very well planned. A great deal was learned from the landing and airborne debacles of the North African, Sicilian, Salerno and Anzio events. However, one major key to our success was in Hitler not releasing his panzer divisions. Interestingly, in the defeat at Stalingrad, Hitler's "playing Uber General" led, heavily, to the loss. When the Allied Command was considering various ways to aid the anti-Hitler forces in assassinating Hitler, there were several top commanders who were reluctant to do so, because of the ineptness in Hitler's military leadership. They were afraid that someone with actual military prowess might take control. Such as al-Quada becoming worried about someone with geniune intelligence and leadership taking control from Shrub and Cheney.

This speech was for the veterans, not us. The bulk of those there were seeing their last D-Day. There were more important battles; more harrowing obstacles into which to be thrown, and more casualties yielded per yard elsewhere--but nothing is as symbolic as Normandy. A group of emigrants returned in a strength that will never again be replicated.

Their sacrifice is what make's Bush's tenure and torture unbearable for feeling people.

HMS Belfast was a light cruiser as well (she can be visited as she is now moored in the Thames in London).

Cornfield and pls
The speech was given in Normandy not Moscow, Leningrad or Stalingrad. I would assume Obama would give a different version of the speech if he were to deliver a comemeration speech in those cities. Better nit picking please.

Of course the Soviets bore the brunt of the slaughter. Without their incredible (and ruthless) determination the war would have been lost. But that doesn't mean Normandy wasn't pivotal. Defeat there could well have spelled defeat for the Soviets too.

Obama didn't say much of anything new - but HOW he said it was incomparable. His sincerity, respectfulness, virtuosity and intelligence make him the best political speaker I have ever seen, bar none.

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