Reflections on the 50th Anniversary of the D-Day invasion.

(The following text is from a speech I wrote in 1994, when I was still in high school.  I presented the speech at a camp in the summer of that year.  While my writing is still reflective of a high school sophomore, I believe my observations and arguments are still relevant. Since I have not posted anything here for 2016, I thought this would be a fitting post for this 72nd anniversary of the D-Day invasion. SMC )

On June 6, 1994, President Bill Clinton joined world leaders in northern France to celebrate the 50^th anniversary of D-Day.  He did all that protocol required of him.  He attended speeches and visited memorials.  He looked every bit the President of the United States.  The media’s attention focused on seemingly touching gesture made by President Clinton-that of placing rock in the shape of a cross on the beach.  But when it was revealed that this incident was staged, it became evident how President Clinton really felt about D-Day.  He wasn’t there to celebrate it.  The 50^th anniversary of the D-Day invasion was merely a photo opportunity for our president.  All the speeches and ceremonies were nothing more than required presidential duty-just another famous date in history to commemorate.

But unfortunately, President Clinton isn’t the only one guilty of participating in the empty ceremonial style.  Today, many Americans have come to view D-Day in the same way.  It has no meaning to their lives.  It has simply joined the long list of historical dates that have a school book significance to the modern world.  We must not let this happen!  We must not allow ourselves to forget the on-going influence of D-Day!  It is an event that history will always remember, and we as Americans must never forget!

Why is this historical event so important you may ask?  First, the invasion across the English Channel was the only successful one of its kind in modern times.  Many invasions across the channel have been attempted.  Few have succeeded.  Both Napoleon and Hitler attempted to send invasion forces across the channel.  Both attempts failed.  Until 1944, the last successful attempt at sending an invasion fleet across the channel was almost 900 years before, in 1066, when William the Conqueror sailed across the channel and defeated the Saxons.

However, it could be easy to forget.  As time marches on, the miracle of D-Day will lose its grasp upon our souls.  As the date grows further away, it will become easy to simply view it as another event in history or just another date to remember for a test.  As the veterans grow old and leave us, we will lose the first-hand accounts of what it was like to hit the beaches and face the Germans.  We will lose the personal testimonies of heroism and honor.  In the year 2019, when we celebrate the 75^th anniversary of D-Day, we will no longer have such people as Walter Cronkite to take us back to Normandy.  As the veterans dies, we will lose an important piece of living history.  The collection of veterans at the 50^th anniversary will probably be the last time such a gathering will ever take place!

But perhaps the most important reason why we should not forget D-Day could be best summarized in the words of the great Roman orator, Cicero: “To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child.”  How can we as a nation move forward in the future if we do not know where we have come from in the past?  By forgetting the Americans who landed at Normandy, we do not only them, but us a great disservice.  How can we remain the leader of the world if we do not know where we have come from and what our past is?  The only way we can maintain our greatness as a nation is to remember the struggles we had on our rise to greatness.  It is our solemn duty as citizens to remember those who gave all they had for the fight for freedom.  But do we want to remember them in President Clinton’s way of empty ceremonies?  Do we want to treat their sacrifice as just another day’s work?  I think not.  Let us instead remember them as we should-men who did their duty.  Let us remember the soldiers, sailors, and airmen who were willing to commit themselves to fighting for the cause of freedom.  And let us dedicate ourselves, once again, to remembering them as we should.  As those soldiers on the beaches of Normandy were willing to do their duty, so let us do ours in preserving their memory and their work.  The nation that forgets its past leaders will be the nation that falls.  But the nation that remembers will be the nation that prevails.  As American citizens, let us dedicate ourselves to the task of remembering D-Day.  We must not forget.  Instead, we must remember so that we are better prepared for the problems and challenges of the future.  Let us remember the past so that we will know what we are about in the present and what we will be about in the future.