COLLEVILLE-SUR-MER, France — They had rushed these shores of Normandy 70 years ago in a daring gambit to expel despotism from Europe, and on Friday they returned as members of a disappearing generation to commemorate D-day.
More than 200 D-day veterans gathered at Omaha Beach in northern France to reflect on their sacrifices and salute their country. But as President Obama, Queen Elizabeth II, Russian President Vladimir Putin, and more than a dozen other world leaders honored them and other World War II veterans, there was a palpable sense that the 90-year-olds standing proudly on stage, or sitting in wheelchairs, might be gathering here for the last time.
Obama and French President Francois Hollande delivered stirring tributes under a blue, sunny sky, the rolling waves of the ocean providing a calm antidote to the violent moment when Allied forces besieged this land and began the liberation of France. F-15 fighter jets flew above in ‘‘missing man’’ formation, and 14,000 people stood in honor.
‘‘Here, we don’t just commemorate victory, as proud of that victory as we are; we don’t just honor sacrifice, as grateful as the world is; we come to remember why America and our allies gave so much for the survival of liberty at its moment of maximum peril,’’ Obama said at the Normandy American Cemetery. ‘‘And we come to tell the story of the men and women who did it, so that it remains seared into the memory of the future world.’’
On June 6, 1944, more than 150,000 American, British, Canadian, and other Allied D-day troops risked their lives to begin reclaiming Nazi-occupied Western Europe.
The D-day invasion accelerated the end of the war in Europe and helped alter the course of history. It cracked Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler’s western front as Soviet troops made advances on the ground in the east. And the amphibious invasion launched the weeks-long Battle of Normandy, which brought the Allies to Paris and pushed the Nazis out.
In his tribute to the veterans — some of whom fudged their ages so they could go to war earlier — Obama drew a direct line between their stories and the physical geography of the land.
‘‘America’s claim — our commitment — to liberty, our claim to equality, our claim to freedom and to the inherent dignity of every human being, that claim is written in the blood on these beaches, and it will endure for eternity,’’ he said.
People who came to the event walked down on to Omaha Beach and then struggled to climb the steep stairs back up to the cemetery’s grounds, with only their imagination telling them what it would have been like to do under constant fire.
Recalling the stories of the veterans who made it here to commemorate the day, Obama connected their sacrifices to those of another generation — ‘‘this 9/11 generation of service members’’ — who also ‘‘chose to serve a cause that’s greater than self.’’ And he pledged that ‘‘future generations, whether 70 or 700 years hence, will gather at places like this to honor them — and to say that these were generations of men and women who proved once again that the United States of America is and will remain the greatest force for freedom the world has ever known.’’