Tributes and Tears

"We owe them what we are today"

Forty summers ago, they had sailed in the dark through howling winds and driving rain and later seen the sea behind them turn crimson with blood. Last week they arrived by bus and chartered plane, and the waves were calm, the heavens benign. The serene afternoon perfectly suited their mission: they had come to the windswept bluffs and lonely beaches of Normandy to encounter long-lost friends and to mourn those lost forever.

More than 4,000 veterans of D-day joined 6,000 other guests at Utah Beach last Wednesday, on the invasion's 40th anniversary. As the heads of state of eight wartime allies looked on, color guards slowly hoisted flags up eight tall poles, and eight national anthems rang out across the hazy air. At sea, where eight gray battleships idly drifted, the French destroyer Montcalm let off a 21-gun salute, and eight French Alpha jets roared through the sky, leaving red, white and blue trails of smoke.

Stepping forward to deliver the gathering's only speech, French President François Mitterrand gallantly stressed that "the enemy of that time was not Germany but the power, the system, the ideology that held Germany in its grip." Mitterrand went on to applaud "the heroism of the Russian people." His main purpose, however, was to give thanks to the 10,000 Allied soldiers who lost their lives on D-day while helping to deliver France from captivity. "We owe them what we are today," said Mitterrand, "and I sometimes ask myself if we have ever paid them back all that we owe."

Yet amid the flawless pageantry, last Wednesday was, at heart, a day for silence and solitary reflection. Gray-haired by now, or balding, or round of girth, most of the returning veterans chose to observe their own private rituals of remembrance. During the long hours of waiting, they could be seen reminiscing with buddies, or recounting their deeds to wives and children and children's children, or simply gazing out to sea. Charles H. Sullivan, who had been a medic in the 29th Infantry Division, could only marvel at the dizzying sea of white crosses and Stars of David at Omaha Beach, where 9,386 G.I.s are buried. "If anything of this kind has to exist," he said, his eyes filled with tears, "this is about as fine a tribute as they could create."

Fine tributes came too from President Reagan at Pointe du Hoc, a rugged promontory jutting into the English Channel. Soon after dawn on Dday, 225 U.S. Rangers began to scale the sheer cliffs, inching upward under a hail of murderous gunfire; after two days of combat, only 90 could still fight. Last week 62 Rangers returned to the site. "These are the boys of Pointe du Hoc," read the President. "These are the champions who helped free a continent." Some of the men being congratulated for their toughness had to take off their glasses to brush away tears.