President Biden’s commemorative speech at the historic cliffs of Pointe du Hoc in France was a plea to an audience back home in America on the 80th anniversary of D-Day.
Biden hailed the memory of those 225 U.S. Army rangers who scaled those cliffs 80 years ago. But the President also was urging Americans themselves to honor those sacrifices by embracing the principles of democracy and recognizing its fragility.
“Democracy begins with each of us, begins when one person decides there’s something more important than themselves … when they decide the mission matters more than their life, when they decide that their country matters more than they do,” Biden said.
The 100-foot cliff at Pointe du Hoc juts out over the Omaha and Utah beaches, where thousands of U.S. troops landed on June 6, 1944, when Allied forces stormed the coast and, ultimately, turned the tide of World War II to free Europeans of the oppression of Hitler.
The occupying German forces had established a defensive position atop the cliff, stationing several long-range guns that posed a major threat to the Allied troops coming ashore.
Led by Lt. Col. James Earl Rudder, 225 Army Rangers scaled the cliff, with ladders borrowed from a fire department, and using hooks and ropes, to destroy the guns, saving an unknown number of lives yet to come ashore.
The first of the Rangers arrived at 7:00am, and by 9:00am their mission was accomplished by destroying those guns atop the cliffs. But they faced two days of counterattacks by the Germans, and by the time they were relieved on June 8, 77 had been killed, and 90 were able to bear arms.
Losers? Suckers? Nahh.