The Presidency by Hugh Sidey: Remembering the Sacrifices of D-Day

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The Presidency

For Ronald Reagan and his generation, France was the killing ground, a distant land of ghastly heroics where thousands of American soldiers fell in two World Wars. These military crusades, and the anguish they caused back home, probably form the largest body of folklore in this century. Reagan was molded by that.

He was in first grade in World War I, and the stories of German atrocities not only made their way into his tiny world but left him frightened. "I can remember as a small child having nightmares that they [the Germans] would be marching down the street," he said in a private talk last week as he prepared to leave for Europe. "I had no conception of how they would get there, but [I recall] waking up, thinking, 'Where would I hide if this were true?' "

One day his mother took him down to the station in Galesburg, Ill., to see a trainload of doughboys. "All the windows in the cars were opened, and the soldiers were all waving out," he said. "I remember my mother lifted me up and I had a penny. I handed it to a soldier for good luck. I've often wondered who he was and if he had good luck."

The boys came home, and Reagan recalls hearing them tell of their exploits. Soon it became clear that "the war to end war" had merely set the stage for another. Germany was on the march again. The gigantic effort to stop Hitler reached its full fury on D-day on the beaches of Normandy. Reagan will be there this week to look and listen and try to understand what it must have been like to fight there, what it must have meant to a President to order young men into the jaws of hell.

Forty years ago, Reagan was far from Omaha Beach. "I was at my desk in the 1st Motion Picture Unit of the Army Air Force, Culver City," he recalled. "That post was directly under Air Corps intelligence." Reagan knew the invasion was imminent.

"We did not know the exact moment," he said, "because there was a 36-hour break in the weather on the Channel. And when Eisenhower got word of that, he gambled and said go, because other than that, they didn't know how long they might have to wait."

Like most Americans, Reagan followed the progress of the invasion hour by hour with his heart in his throat. But not until days later, when the raw combat film was brought in to be edited down for the general staff, did Reagan feel the full impact of the event.

"You'd go into the projection room and watch that film that was going to be edited," he said. "The troops were coming off the landing barges and heading for the beach and up the beach. And I would watch as closely as I could, knowing that this was real and they were under fire. It just used to tear you in two because you'd see the individuals that were hit go down."

He had no family members who stormed the beaches.