Our Lord Jesus Christ said: “Greater love hath no man than this, that man lay down his life for his friends.”
On June 6th, 70 years ago, an event took place in Normandy, France, that has touched, in direct and radical manner, the lives of not just everyone living in this country today, but everyone living in the world.
Moreover it has touched us at St Stephen’s in a very personal way: For a number of our founders, including the late Tom Cadwalader, for whom the Cadwalader room is named, were there in Normandy on that day.
It began at 1:30 AM when paratroops from the U.S. 101st and 82nd Airborne Divisions began to drop in the region beyond Utah beach, while others from the British 6th Airborne Division began to drop east of the Orne River.
Shortly after midnight, bombers of the British Royal Air Force had started to unload 6,000 tons of bombs on the costal batteries between Cherbourg and Le Havre. As daylight broke, American heavy bombers began pounded the shore defenses with another 3,000 tons of bombs for a half hour preceding the landing. Then medium light and fighter-bombers swarmed in to attack individual ground targets.
The first troops disembarked at 6.30 AM under heavy supporting fire from naval guns, as well as from tanks and artillery pieces on landing craft. Casualties were heavy and not solely because Allied troops, especially the Americans, encountered determined resistance.
Rough weather had caused postponement of the landing for two days and, though the seas had moderated somewhat, the force of the currents drove landing craft off course. Many soldiers, weighed down by their equipment, drowned before reaching shore. Almost all of the tanks fitted with jettisonable flotation devices sank under the buffeting they took from the waves.
In the next wave of troops came the infantry men to cover the combat engineers and naval crews whose job was to blast their way through the beach defenses, then came successive waves of assault infantry with supporting weapons.
Heavy resistance, particularly on Utah and Omaha beaches, occasioned serious losses. But, doggedly, the attacking forces pressed on, storming their way through the defenses, and by nightfall the five seaborne divisions engaged in the assault were firmly established ashore. It was the beginning of the end of one of the most hideous totalitarian regimes the world has ever seen.
It’s not my purpose to detail the casualty lists, analyze the strategy, or sum up the geopolitical implications of that remarkable day 70 years ago. That job has been done far better on television, radio, and in our daily newspapers. Nor do I propose to heap praise on particular acts of heroism. There are far too many examples of that for me to do any individual justice.
Rather, I would like to consider, in a very general sort of way, those brave young men whose decision to answer our country’s—and, by extension, humanity’s—call led them to those Normandy beaches on June 6th, 1944. These American soldiers, sailors, and airmen shared one thing in common: White, black, Native American, Hispanic, Asian, officer, enlisted man; very, very few of them were in any sense professional soldiers.
They came from all walks of life—farmers and foundry men, bankers and bakers, stock brokers and stockyard hands, cabbies and cowboys—and with very few exceptions most intended to return to their civil occupations as soon as they could get the war over and done with.
They were citizen soldiers who came to the colors because their country had called them. They accepted that call because they knew that one of the most important obligations of American citizens is to defend the liberties they cherish.
It is an obligation the general acceptance of which stretches back more than 300 years … to the time when the first settlers set foot on these shores. It is a sense of duty that is rooted in America’s very special and intensely close relationship with that extraordinary book called the Bible.
And this relationship, in turn, arises from the fact that from the very beginning, this land, this blessed land, was regarded by those who settled it as a “Promised Land”—a “Land of Milk and Honey.”
It is by no means accidental that the people who stormed out of the Wilderness into the Land of Canaan 3,500 years were similarly citizen soldiers—men whose normal every day occupations were as far from soldiering as it is possible to get: herdsmen, metal workers, carpenters, potters, fishermen.
They were very ordinary men took up the trade of arms only when called upon to defend their faith, their homes, and their loved ones.
When the call to arms came, the situation was invariably desperate. When the Angel of the Lord appeared to Gideon in the days of the Judges, the whole land was under occupation by the Midianites.
The man God had singled out to save the country was so terrified he was threshing his wheat in his wine press in hopes that the Midianites wouldn’t find it—not at all your average run-of-the-mill superhero.
All-too-often they had to turn to unorthodox methods to make up for their lack of skill at the business of soldiering. King David was the prototype of the American Minute Man when he used his prowess with a sling-shot on the hunting field to slay the giant Goliath.
Often the children of Israel relied on inventiveness and command of technology to make up for deficiencies in numbers and military expertise. Just think of Gideon and David’s use of psychological warfare.
Frequently, they had nothing to rely on but their faith that God would come to their aid—as in the days of Hezekiah when the Land of Judah stood defenseless in face of the armies of the Assyrian King Sennacherib. And God miraculously preserved the Holy City of Jerusalem in much the same way that He sustained and preserved America during the Revolution.
Thanks to the courage of those very ordinary citizen soldiers in ancient Israel, the Faith that has created and sustained Western civilization was passed on to us. They were, indeed, the torch bearers of “the light that lightened the gentiles.
And it is not wholly accidental that, in this century, it is thanks in large part to the courage of America’s citizen soldiers that Western Civilization has been preserved.
If the benefits of living in here in America are great, the duties and obligations are great also. Young Americans have never shirked those duties and obligations. even at the cost of their lives—most recently in Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf, Iraq and Afghanistan.
But at this time we pay particular tribute to those who, on June 6th, 1944, and the desperate days that followed, honored their obligation to serve their fellow men. Especially we remember those who made the supreme sacrifice, laying down their lives in that cause.
May we remember them and the great debt we—and our children and our children’s children—owe them as long as this nation exits. They have given us the privilege of growing old in liberty, comfort, and prosperity. We must never forget them—for it is a privilege in which they have been denied a share.
Laurence Binyon eloquently expresses our obligation to them in a poem called “A Song for the Fallen.” It reads in part:
They shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old;
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
GPH✠
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