When President Bush landed on the USS Abraham Lincoln last year, sailors on the aircraft carrier repeatedly told me it was the highlight of their military careers.
I knew exactly what they meant.
My own commander-in-chief moment came almost 20 years ago to the day of President Ronald Reagan’s death, when he delivered his now-famous speech at Pointe du Hoc, France.
It was the 40th anniversary of the D-Day invasion of Normandy. I was a soldier in the 1st Infantry Division – the “Big Red One” had a brigade stationed in southern Germany at the time to counter the Soviet threat – and was sent with other troops to France for the anniversary ceremonies. The 1st had sacrificed many soldiers on bloody Omaha Beach during the invasion, and the Army wanted us there as it honored our ancestors in arms.
I was the division’s photographer, and was sent to cover Reagan’s speech.
The memories are still vivid. Walter Cronkite, sitting on a nearby bunker talking with “the boys of Pointe du Hoc.” The crowd filled with grateful and friendly French, residents of the neighboring villages that became battlegrounds. The aging Rangers, who had scaled the rocky cliffs amid grenades and machine-gun fire, teary-eyed and smiling at the president’s laudatory lines.
And the speech itself, as Nancy Reagan sat in the chair closest to her husband, where Reagan reminded soldiers young and old, and the world, why American forces still stood on foreign soil.
“Soviet forces that came to the center of this continent did not leave when peace came,” Reagan said. “They’re still there, uninvited, unwanted, unyielding, almost 40 years after the war.”
“We in America have learned bitter lessons from two World Wars. It is better to be here ready to protect the peace than to take blind shelter across the sea, rushing to respond only after freedom is lost.”
Reporter Brian Kelly: 425-339-3422 or kelly@heraldnet.com.
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