Giving Thanks For Freedom

American presidents are usually on U.S. soil on Memorial Day.

Not this year.

President Bush was in France and paid homage to American war dead at the D-Day beaches of Normandy on a Memorial Day made more poignant by Sept. 11 and the war on terrorism.

Standing among the graves of American soldiers killed in the liberation of France in World War II, Mr. Bush pledged Monday that the United States will never forget those who perished on the beaches of Normandy "for the future of humanity." He spoke about "the new defense of freedom," reports CBS News correspondent John Roberts

Mr. Bush spoke at the Normandy American Cemetery, where 9,387 Americans killed in the war are buried. The cemetery sits near the beaches of Normandy, where U.S. troops landed in the June 1944 D-Day invasion.

"Our wars have won for us every hour we live in freedom," Mr. Bush said. "Our wars have taken from us the men and women we honor today, and every hour of the lifetimes they had hoped to live."

The same is true now, Mr. Bush said, with the U.S.-led military campaign that pushed the Taliban out of power in Afghanistan.

"For some military families in America and in Europe, the grief is recent with the losses we have suffered in Afghanistan," said the president.

Roiling clouds, and intermittent rain added a touch of sadness to the ceremony. Mr. Bush strode alone among painfully neat rows of thousands of bone-white crosses or Stars of David, each decorated with two flags, one American, one French.

"Each person buried here understood his duty, but also dreamed of going back home to the people and things he knew," Mr. Bush said. "The day will come when no one is left who knew them. ... The day will never come when America forgets them.

"Our nation, and the world, will always remember what they did here, what they gave here, for the future of humanity," he said.

Fifty-eight years ago, the fight to liberate Europe from the Nazis formed a bond between the United States and France, which then spread throughout Europe, "turning enemies to friends, and the pursuits of war to the pursuits of peace," the president said.

That bond is renewed today, Mr. Bush said, as European nations join with the United States in the struggle to rid the world of terrorism.

After the speech, Mr. Bush and French President Jacques Chirac laid two wreaths, floral arrangements of the U.S. and French flags, at a memorial for the fallen combatants. After a moment of silence, the national anthems of both countries were played, followed by a 21-gun salute, a military fly-over and a mournful rendition of "Taps" by a lone bugler.

It is a tradition for American presidents to visit the landing beaches at Normandy where the June 6, 1944, invasion began a rollback of the Nazi war machine entrenched in Western Europe and helped end World War II the following year.

President Reagan went to the D-Day beaches on the 40th anniversary in 1984, and President Clinton was there in 1994 for the 50th. Mr. Bush, whose father, the former president, fought in the Pacific as a torpedo bomber pilot in World War II, goes at a time Americans are still reeling from the Sept. 11 attacks.

"All Memorial Days are days in which Americans ought to give thanks for freedom and the fact that somebody sacrificed for their freedom. This Memorial Day is the first Memorial Day in a long time in which younger Americans know firsthand the price that was paid for their freedom," said Mr. Bush.

Mr. Bush's visit was not welcomed by all.

In Paris, an estimated 4,500 people marched through central Paris on Sunday to protest President Bush's two-day visit and denounce American domestic and foreign policy.

Marchers shouted "Bush, you are the terrorist" as they walked from the landmark Place de la Republique to the Bastille, where they burned American flags.

Also in Paris, several hours earlier, several dozen death penalty opponents gathered near a replica of the Statue of Liberty in Paris to denounce Mr. Bush's support for capital punishment.

The statue is located near a bridge where death-penalty opponents hung 152 cardboard figures that dangled from string to denote each person executed in Texas during Mr. Bush's nearly six years there as governor.

In Caen, near the D-Day beaches, an anti-Bush protest on Sunday brought out between 1,000 and 2,000 demonstrators - way below the 5,000 to 10,000 organizers had hoped for. Mr. Bush is under fire by some in Europe for pursuing a perceived go-it-alone policy.

Mr. Bush's first stop Monday was at Sainte Marie Eglise, the village that was the principal objective of the 82nd Airborne Division on the early morning of June 6. It was the first town in France liberated by American troops.

Mr. Bush and his wife Laura attended a memorial service at the church.

The Bushes also took a helicopter tour of various sites, including Pointe du Hoc, where the American Second Ranger Battalion scaled a 100-foot cliff and seized German artillery pieces that could have fired on the U.S. troops landing at Omaha Beach. The Rangers suffered high casualties in the operation.

It is the only point on the beach to be left in its 1944 state. With barbed wire, blockhouses and bomb craters, it is a gripping reminder of the war.

French President Chirac, at a joint news conference with Mr. Bush on Sunday in Paris, called the U.S. president's presence for the holiday "a very strong gesture that we will not forget."

Chirac dismissed the demonstrations against Mr. Bush as "marginal" and said they do not represent a widespread feeling of antipathy toward the United States or its president.

"Relations between Europe and the United States are not only a very old, not only essential to the world equilibrium, but I would say, in reality, becoming more and more important," said the French president.

Shortly after noon ET on Monday, Mr. Bush arrived in Rome on the final leg of a four-nation European tour, culminating on Tuesday with a NATO summit of 20 world leaders.

Mr. Bush is also scheduled to meet Pope John Paul on Tuesday before heading home to Washington at the end of a trip which took him to Germany, Russia and France.

The NATO summit will set the seal on a new era of cooperation with the defense alliance's former Cold War foe Russia, establishing a joint council to set policy on a range of issues, from counter-terrorism to weapons of mass destruction.