U.S.

Bush Dedicates D-Day Memorial

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

June 6, 2001 / 9:39 AM EDT / CBS

President Bush marked the 57th anniversary of the allied invasion of Normandy by dedicating the National D-Day Memorial in Bedford, Va.

"Our shared values and experience must guide us now," Mr. Bush said.

On June 6, 1944, D-Day, 156,000 soldiers from the United States and 11 other countries formed the largest armada in history to breach Adolf Hitler's Atlantic Wall on the northern coast of France.

Bedford is the site of the new memorial of concrete and polished granite because, in the Normandy campaign, the Virginia town of 3,400 people lost 23 of the 35 soldiers it had sent overseas. It was the highest per-capita loss for any U.S. community.

D-Day vets say this is their last great reunion. The stark granite arch memorial and bronze statues of soldiers hitting and dying on the beach brings back a flood of memories for Bob Slaughter, who landed on Omaha beach.

"The worst thing was those bodies. They were washing in the surf -hundreds of them - and many of them with blood stained shirts," said Slaughter, who was a leader of the effort to build the memorial.

In his remarks, Mr. Bush said: "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 president spoke in front of the memorial's dramatic bronze sculpture of soldiers clawing their way up a wall. Before him spread a stone beach and shallow pool where another bronze soldier advanced through chest-high water while a buddy lay dying in the sand, his Bible at his head.

Mr. Bush saluted World War II's "scared and brave kids, by the thousands, who kept fighting and kept climbing."

"Free societies in Europe can be traced to the first footprints on the first beach on June 6, 1944," he said.

Aides hoped the speech would set the stage for Bush's first trip to Europe as president. He leaves Monday night for a weeklong trip to Madrid; Warsaw; Brussels, Belgium; Ljubljana, Slovenia; and Goteborg, Sweden.

Bush traveled to Bedford with 98-year-old Sen. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, who participated in the 82nd Airborne Division landing at Normandy.

"At ease," the commander in chief instructed his audience of 15,000 people, many of them World War II veterans with small American flags poking from their pockets, who waited for hours under a wilting sun.

The British and French ambassadors to the United States also participated in the ceremony, each saluting the power of international cooperation that the 1944 liberation of France represented.

"France does not forget and I want to express my country's profound gratitude to all the veterans who risked their lives in that great battle," said Francois Bujon de l'Estang of France.

Bedford's $13.6 million monument, paid for entirely by donations, sits on 88 acres of pastureland about 25 miles eas of Roanoke.

The structure aims to evoke the Normandy landing with an architectural representation of a Higgins boat entering the small wading pool where sporadic sprays of water represent German fire.

"Overlord," code name for the invasion, is inscribed on a granite arch that stands 44 feet, 6 inches high — representing June 6, 1944 — and is colored black and white like Allied airplanes.

Surrounding the arch are flags the countries that participated in the invasion: Britain, France, Australia, the Czech Republic, Belgium, Canada, Greece, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland and the United States.