Obama: D-Day veterans changed course of century

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(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-06-07 11:28

OMAHA BEACH – US President Barack Obama honored the valiant dead and the "sheer improbability" of their D-Day victory, commemorating Saturday's 65th anniversary of the decisive invasion.

Obama: D-Day veterans changed course of century

US President Barack Obama waves as he walks with Normandy American Cemetery Superintendent Daniel Neese (left) at a memorial service at the Normandy American Cemetery in Colleville-sur-Mer, France, on the 65th anniversary of the D-Day landings Saturday June 6, 2009. [Agencies]

The young US commander in chief, speaking at the American cemetery after the leaders of France, Canada and Britain, held up the sacrifices of D-Day veterans and their "unimaginable hell" as a lesson for modern times.

"Friends and veterans, what we cannot forget - what we must not forget - is that D-Day was a time and a place where the bravery and selflessness of a few was able to change the course of an entire century," he said.

"At an hour of maximum danger, amid the bleakest of circumstances, men who thought themselves ordinary found it within themselves to do the extraordinary."

Obama opened the emotional day by meeting with French President Nicolas Sarkozy in the nearby city of Caen. Their wives, dueling style icons in similar attire, met separately at the elegant French Prefecture.

This D-Day anniversary assumed special significance because veterans of the battle are reaching their 80s and 90s and their numbers are dwindling. One American veteran, Jim Norene, who fought with the 101st Airborne Division, came back for Saturday's ceremony, but died in his sleep Friday night.

"Jim was gravely ill when he left his home, and he knew that he might not return," Obama said. "But just as he did 65 years ago, he came anyway. May he now rest in peace with the boys he once bled with, and may his family always find solace in the heroism he showed here."

Joined by Sarkozy, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Obama stopped first at the gray granite visitors center and then at an overlook where the leaders talked at length with two D-Day veterans waiting at the top of the once-bloody bluffs.

The sunny sky, crashing waves, lush vegetation and pleasant breezes created a scene of seaside tranquility at the spot one D-Day veteran recalled as mostly "darkness and confusion."

"I lost a lot of pals on D-Day," said Norman Coleman of Manchester, England. He marked the day by visiting several other burial grounds scattered around the region, where soldiers were buried as they fell in pitched battles over 12 decisive weeks.

Julien Marchand, a 40-year-old carpenter, spontaneously embraced Coleman in an outburst of gratitude on the streets of Caen, nearly knocking over the elderly veteran. "Thank you, thank you, merci," Marchand exclaimed.

The ceremony at Omaha Beach, on what is technically US soil at Colleville-sur-Mer, took place under an American flag flying from a metal pole hundreds of feet high. The crowd of thousands spread far back from the leaders' platform and colonnade engraved with these words: "This embattled shore, portal of freedom, is forever hallowed by the ideals, the valor and the sacrifice."

With clusters of young people sprinkled among the graying heads and wheelchairs, the audience spilled down the path that cut between some of the nearly 10,000 perfectly aligned white crosses that mark the graves of US dead. A mother breast fed an infant on the lawn. French adolescent girls whispered excitedly about the chance to see Obama.

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