Joshua 1:9 “Be strong and of good courage. Do not be afraid or dismayed. The Lord your God is with you.”

Ronald Reagan’s Speech at 40th Anniversary of D-Day (June 6, 1984) is worth remembering this week as we continue celebrating June as Soldier Pride Month. Here are main sections of his speech that celebrates our “Greatest Generation” who sacrificed their lives for freedom, believing God was with them.

“For 4 long years, much of Europe had been under a terrible shadow. Free nations had fallen, Jews cried out in the camps, millions cried out for liberation. Europe was enslaved. Here in Normandy the rescue began. The Allies stood and fought against tyranny in a giant undertaking unparalleled in human history.

At dawn, on the morning of the 6th of June 1944, 225 Rangers jumped off the British landing craft and ran to the bottom of these cliffs. Their mission was one of the most difficult and daring of the invasion: to climb these sheer and desolate cliffs and take out the enemy guns. The Allies had been told that some of the mightiest of these guns were here and they would be trained on the beaches to stop the Allied advance.

The Rangers looked up and saw the enemy soldiers shooting down at them with machine guns and throwing grenades. And the American Rangers began to climb. They shot rope ladders over the face of these cliffs and began to pull themselves up. When one Ranger fell, another would take his place.

When one rope was cut, a Ranger would grab another and begin his climb again. Soon, one by one, the Rangers pulled themselves over the top, and in seizing the firm land at the top of these cliffs, they began to seize back the continent of Europe. 225 came here. After 2 days of fighting, only 90 could still bear arms.

Behind me is a memorial that symbolizes the Ranger daggers that were thrust into the top of these cliffs. And before me are the men who put them there. These are the boys of Pointe du Hoc – the men who took the cliffs – the champions who helped free a continent. These are the heroes who helped end a war.

40 summers have passed since the battle that you fought here. You were young the day you took these cliffs; some hardly more than boys, with the deepest joys of life before you. Yet, you risked everything here.

Why did you do it? What impelled you to put aside the instinct for self-preservation and risk your lives to take these cliffs? What inspired all the men of the armies that met here? We look at you, and somehow we know the answer. It was faith and belief; it was loyalty and love.

The men of Normandy had faith that what they were doing was right, faith that they fought for all humanity, faith that a just God would grant them mercy on this beachhead or on the next.

It was the deep knowledge – and pray God we have not lost it – that there is a profound, moral difference between the use of force for liberation and the use of force for conquest. You were here to liberate, not to conquer, and so you and those others did not doubt your cause. And you were right not to doubt.

You all knew that some things are worth dying for. All of you loved liberty. All of you were willing to fight tyranny, and you knew the people of your countries were behind you.

The Americans who fought here knew word of the invasion was spreading back home. In Georgia they were filling the churches at 4 a.m., in Kansas they were kneeling on their porches and praying, and in Philadelphia they were ringing the Liberty Bell.

Something else helped the men of D-day: their rockhard belief that God was an ally in this great cause.

The night before the invasion, when Colonel Wolverton asked his parachute troops to kneel with him in prayer he told them: ‘Do not bow your heads but look up so you can see God and ask His blessing in what we’re about to do.’ General Matthew Ridgway listening in the darkness for God’s promise to Joshua: ‘I will not fail thee nor forsake thee.’ These things impelled them; these things shaped the unity of the Allies.

Here, in Normandy, let us make a vow to our dead. Let us show them by our actions that we understand what they died for. Let our actions say to them the words for which Matthew Ridgway listened: ‘I will not fail thee nor forsake thee.’ Let us continue to stand for the ideals for which they lived and died.”

As this week’s verse, used by the Ranger leaders as they made ready, says: “God is with me – be strong and courageous – do not be afraid.” Today, as Christians, celebrate, remember, and mimic the Rangers.
“The Evidence of Faith’s Substance” _ Article #609