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| National
D-Day Memorial, Bedford, Va. |
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"Across
the Beach" is one of
many bronze statues sculpted
by Jim Brothers, of Kansas,
at The National D-Day Memorial
in Bedford, Va.
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PRESIDENT
BUSH'S SPEECH CONTINUED:
"Our presence here, 57 years
removed from that event, gives testimony
to how much was gained and how much
was lost. What was gained that first
day was a beach, and then a village,
and then a country. And in time, all
of Western Europe would be freed from
fascism and its armies.
"The achievement of Operation
Overlord is nearly impossible to overstate,
in its consequences for our own lives
and the life of the world. Free societies
in Europe can be traced to the first
footprints on the first beach on June
6, 1944. What was lost on D-Day we
can never measure and never forget.
"When the day was over, America
and her allies had lost at least 2,500
of the bravest men ever to wear a
uniform. Many thousands more would
die on the days that followed. They
scaled towering cliffs, looking straight
up into enemy fire. They dropped into
grassy fields sown with land mines.
They overran machine gun nests hidden
everywhere, punched through walls
of barbed wire, overtook bunkers of
concrete and steel. The great journalist
Ernie Pyle said, "It seemed to
me a pure miracle that we ever took
the beach at all. The advantages were
all theirs, the disadvantages all
ours. And yet," said Pyle, "we
got on." [ speech
continued . . . ]
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