Memorial Day 2010

There are two recent exceptions of presidents missing going to


Arlington. George Bush Sr was at a ceremony in Main in 92 instead but

it also was not a time of war and he was a war veteran himself.

The second miss was in 2002 by GW. He went to Normandy to honor our

dead there.



Since we are not going to get a speech by Obama on this day, he's on vacation in Chicago, I think it
would be most fitting to read the following speach given by President Bush at Normandy in 2002:

May 27, 2002

President Bush Commemorates Memorial Day at Normandy

Remarks by the President in Memorial Day Commemoration

The Normandy American Cemetery

Colleville-Sur-Mer, France





PRESIDENT BUSH: Mr. President and Mrs. Chirac; Secretary Powell and

Secretary Principi; members of the United States Congress; members of

the American Armed Services; veterans; family members; fellow

Americans; and friends: We have gathered on this quiet corner of

France as the sun rises on Memorial Day in the United States of

America. This is a day our country has set apart to remember what was

gained in our wars, and all that was lost.



Our wars have won for us every hour we live in freedom. Our wars have

taken from us the men and women we honor today, and every hour of the

lifetimes they had hoped to live.



This day of remembrance was first observed to recall the terrible

casualties of the war Americans fought against each other. In the

nearly 14 decades since, our nation's battles have all been far from

home. Here on the continent of Europe were some of the fiercest of

those battles, the heaviest losses, and the greatest victories.



And in all those victories American soldiers came to liberate, not to

conquer. The only land we claim as our own are the resting places of

our men and women.



More than 9,000 are buried here, and many times that number have -- of

fallen soldiers lay in our cemeteries across Europe and America. From

a distance, surveying row after row of markers, we see the scale and

heroism and sacrifice of the young. We think of units sustaining

massive casualties, men cut down crossing a beach, or taking a hill,

or securing a bridge. We think of many hundreds of sailors lost in

their ships.



The war correspondent, Ernie Pyle, told of a British officer walking

across the battlefield just after the violence had ended. Seeing the

bodies of American boys scattered everywhere, the officer said, in

sort of a hushed eulogy spoken only to himself, "Brave men, brave men."



All who come to a place like this feel the enormity of the loss. Yet,

for so many, there is a marker that seems to sit alone -- they come

looking for that one cross, that one Star of David, that one name.

Behind every grave of a fallen soldier is a story of the grief that

came to a wife, a mother, a child, a family, or a town.



A World War II orphan has described her family's life after her father

was killed on a field in Germany. "My mother," she said, "had lost

everything she was waiting for. She lost her dreams. There were an

awful lot of perfect linen tablecloths in our house that never got

used, so many things being saved for a future that was never to be."



Each person buried here understood his duty, but also dreamed of going

back home to the people and the things he knew. Each had plans and

hopes of his own, and parted with them forever when he died.



The day will come when no one is left who knew them, when no visitor

to this cemetery can stand before a grave remembering a face and a

voice. The day will never come when America forgets them. And our

nation and the world will always remember what they did here, and what

they gave here for the future of humanity.



As dawn broke during the invasion, a little boy in the village off of

Gold Beach called out to his mother, "Look, the sea is black with

boats." Spread out before them and over the horizon were more than

5,000 ships and landing craft. In the skies were some of the 12,000

planes sent on the first day of Operation Overlord. The Battle of

Normandy would last many days, but June 6th, 1944, was the crucial day.



The late President, Francois Mitterrand, said that nothing in history

compares to D-day. "The 6th of June," he observed, "sounded the hour

when history tipped toward the camp of freedom." Before dawn, the

first paratroopers already had been dropped inland. The story is told

of a group of French women finding Americans and imploring them not to

leave. The trooper said, "We're not leaving. If necessary, this is the

place we die."



Units of Army Rangers on shore, in one of history's bravest displays,

scaled cliffs directly in the gunfire, never relenting even as

comrades died all around them. When they had reached the top, the

Rangers radioed back the code for success: "Praise the Lord."



Only a man who is there, charging out of a landing craft, can know

what it was like. For the entire liberating force, there was only the

ground in front of them -- no shelter, no possibility of retreat. They

were part of the largest amphibious landing in history, and perhaps

the only great battle in which the wounded were carried forward.

Survivors remember the sight of a Catholic chaplain, Father Joe Lacey,

lifting dying men out of the water, and comforting and praying with

them. Private Jimmy Hall was seen carrying the body of his brother,

Johnny, saying, "He can't, he can't be dead. I promised Mother I'd

look after him."



Such was the size of the Battle of Normandy. Thirty-eight pairs of

brothers died in the liberation, including Bedford and Raymond Hoback

of Virginia, both who fell on D-Day. Raymond's body was never found.

All he left behind was his Bible, discovered in the sand. Their mother

asked that Bedford be buried here, as well, in the place Raymond was

lost, so her sons would always be together.



On Memorial Day, America honors her own. Yet we also remember all the

valiant young men and women from many allied nations, including

France, who shared in the struggle here, and in the suffering. We

remember the men and women who served and died alongside Americans in

so many terrible battles on this continent, and beyond.



Words can only go so far in capturing the grief and sense of loss for

the families of those who died in all our wars. For some military

families in America and in Europe, the grief is recent, with the

losses we have suffered in Afghanistan. They can know, however, that

the cause is just and, like other generations, these sacrifices have

spared many others from tyranny and sorrow.



Long after putting away his uniform, an American GI expressed his own

pride in the truth about all who served, living and dead. He said, "I

feel like I played my part in turning this from a century of darkness

into a century of light."



Here, where we stand today, the new world came back to liberate the

old. A bond was formed of shared trial and shared victory. And a light

that scattered darkness from these shores and across France would

spread to all of Europe -- in time, turning enemies into friends, and

the pursuits of war into the pursuits of peace. Our security is still

bound up together in a transatlantic alliance, with soldiers in many

uniforms defending the world from terrorists at this very hour.



The grave markers here all face west, across an ageless and

indifferent ocean to the country these men and women served and loved.

The thoughts of America on this Memorial Day turn to them and to all

their fallen comrades in arms. We think of them with lasting

gratitude; we miss them with lasting love; and we pray for them. And

we trust in the words of the Almighty God, which are inscribed in the

chapel nearby: "I give unto them eternal life, that they shall never

perish."



God bless. (Applause.)



END 2:30 P.M.





Best Wishes,

Tim Woodsome