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

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But he had friends there. "A young man from my home town was a naval officer on a ship that was picking up the wounded from the landing barges that ferried them back to the boats offshore," Reagan recalled. "He was on the bridge, and down below on the deck they were pulling men aboard. And he, through his glasses, was watching a German artillery pillbox up on the bluffs. He could even see the man with the range finder. One shot came over and landed just short of the ship. Then he watched the second shot and it was a little long. He knew the third shot was going to be it. He said he had an irresistible desire to put the glasses down and tell the men down on the deck, 'Never mind.' And while he was watching and feeling that and thinking that, the pillbox disappeared. Our cruisers got a direct hit, and the third shot never came."

Reagan has never been to the Normandy landing sites, but his wife Nancy visited Omaha Beach two years ago and came back to tell him of the melancholy beauty she saw in the mist. "I'm looking forward to it," Reagan said, "although I know I'll probably have trouble getting through it. I found myself getting unable to speak at the ceremony for the Unknown Soldier. You see the veterans today, and I think of our young people. I once said to Bob Hope that he has all that film from all those trips that he made. I said, 'Bob, did you ever think about putting all of that together just so that kids today could see kids then? No one ever thinks their parents were young.' " Reagan has read a few of the dozens of letters that have been sent to him about the commemoration of Dday. One from a young woman has stuck in his mind. "She told me so eloquently in the letter how [D-day] was the most significant moment in her father's life. From a child up she remembered the stories that he would tell, including his own feelings about that day. He died a few years ago. She and her family just feel that they must go there now and see that place that meant so much to him." All of America seems to share some of that compulsion now.

Reagan views the Normandy assault as a battle that had to be fought. But he knows too how hard giving the command to unleash such destructive might had to be. "This must be the most heartbreaking thing that anyone could ever have to do," the President said. He looks forward to matching his mental pictures of the battle sites with the real thing.

"There are so many great and heroic stories [about the beaches]," Reagan said. "Omaha Beach, of course, is the one that seems to linger most in everybody's mind. But then there are other spots, the one where the Rangers climbed those sheer bluffs under fire [Pointe-du-Hoc]."

The D-day tribute will be led by men now grown old, but in a very special way the ceremony will honor American youth. "I'll always remember what George Marshall said," Reagan related as he ended his D-day reminiscence. "Someone asked Marshall if we had any secret weapon. And he said, 'Yes, the best damned kids in the world.' "