Obama: D-Day veterans changed course of century

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(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-06-07 11:28

US President Barack Obama attends a D-Day commemoration at the US military cemetery in Colleville-sur-Mer June 6, 2009. [Agencies]

Issac Phillips, 84, recalled having little idea what he was getting into in the dark early morning hours of June 6, 1944, as a private in the US 22nd Infantry regiment who crossed the English Channel and landed at nearby Utah Beach.

"The water was cold, the boat was going like this" - his arms spiked up and down - "and some of them fell in the water. We are all close together and we can't move very much at all. They say if you stay close together, you don't get seasick. You get seasick anyway."

Allied forces charged the shores of five beaches on France's northern coast, facing German land mines, machine guns and heavy artillery. Some 215,000 Allied soldiers, and roughly as many Germans, were killed or wounded during D-Day and the ensuing three months before the Allies captured Normandy, opening a path toward Paris that eventually took them to Germany and victory over the Nazis.

Before Obama delivered his 16-minute address, the US presidential seal was placed on the lectern.

"You remind us that our future is not shaped by mere chance or circumstance," the president said to the gathered veterans. "You could have done only what was necessary to ensure your own survival. But that's not what you did. That's not the story you told on D-Day."

A 21-gun salute lent an acrid smell to the air that grew grayer and chillier as the ceremony ended. Taps played. A 12-plane flyover of French, British and American jets boomed above.

There was a personal side to the wartime memories for Obama. He mentioned his grandfather, Stanley Dunham, who came ashore at Omaha Beach six weeks after D-Day. Dunham's older brother, Ralph, hit Omaha on D-Day plus four. Another great uncle, Charles Payne, helped liberate a satellite prison of the Buchenwald concentration camp in 1945 and accompanied Obama to Normandy.

After the ceremony, Obama and his wife, Michelle, returned to Paris to reunite with their daughters, Sasha and Malia, for a family evening in the City of Light. They planned sightseeing on Sunday before Obama returns to Washington from his trip, which also took him to Saudi Arabia and Egypt. The first lady and the girls planned to remain in France until at least Monday.

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