Saturday night the Jackson County Library Foundation kicked off it's inaugural Southern Oregon Art & Lectures season with noted historian Douglas Brinkley. Dr Brinkley spoke at the South Medford High School Auditorium on the subject of his latest book "Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America." Since Teddy Roosevelt is one of my favorite Presidents and the Oregon Ducks had a bye my wife and I obtained some tickets from a colleague who is on the Library Foundation Board. There was a nice turnout and Brinkley gave a nice talk about Teddy Roosevelt.After his speech he took questions from the audience and was ask as a historian what characteristics made a great president. He said both TR and FDR were great Presidents but TR always told the truth and FDR was noted not telling the truth , and I paraphrase, always telling people want they wanted the hear. An Ashland bookstore was selling some of Brinkley's books in the lobby and I purchased his book titled "Ronald Reagan, D-Day and the U.S. Ranger Battalion." The book tells the story of "The Boys of Pointe Du Hoc" from D-Day in 1944 through President Reagan's speech there in 1984 on the 40th anniversary of the allied landings at Normandy. A few years ago I had the opportunity to visit "Pointe Du Hoc" where the Rangers scaled the cliffs to pierce Hitlers "Atlantic Wall" and where Reagan spoke. After his lecture Brinkley autographed books and I had him autograph my book. All an all a pleasant night in Southern Oregon.
The following is an old post on this blog:
Ronald Reagan Speech -- Pointe de Hoc, Normandy, June 6, 1984 (The 40th anniversary of D-Day)
We're here to mark that day in history when the Allied peoples joined in battle to reclaim this continent to liberty. For four long years, much of Europe had been under a terrible shadow. Free nations had fallen, Jews cried out in the camps, millions cried out for liberation. Europe was enslaved, and the world prayed for its rescue. Here in Normandy the rescue began. Here the Allies stood and fought against tyranny in a giant undertaking unparalleled in human history.
We stand on a lonely, windswept point on the northern shore of France. The air is soft, but forty years ago at this moment, the air was dense with smoke and the cries of men, and the air was filled with the crack of rifle fire and the roar of cannon. At dawn, on the morning of the 6th of June 1944, 225 Rangers jumped off the British landing craft and ran to the bottom of these cliffs. Their mission was one of the most difficult and daring of the invasion: to climb these sheer and desolate cliffs and take out the enemy guns. The Allies had been told that some of the mightiest of these guns were here and they would be trained on the beaches to stop the Allied advance.
The Rangers looked up and saw the enemy soldiers -- at the edge of the cliffs shooting down at them with machine-guns and throwing grenades. And the American Rangers began to climb. They shot rope ladders over the face of these cliffs and began to pull themselves up. When one Ranger fell, another would take his place. When one rope was cut, a Ranger would grab another and begin his climb again. They climbed, shot back, and held their footing. Soon, one by one, the Rangers pulled themselves over the top, and in seizing the firm land at the top of these cliffs, they began to seize back the continent of Europe. Two hundred and twenty-five came here. After two days of fighting only ninety could still bear arms.
Behind me is a memorial that symbolizes the Ranger daggers that were thrust into the top of these cliffs. And before me are the men who put them there.
These are the boys of Pointe du Hoc. These are the men who took the cliffs. These are the champions who helped free a continent. These are the heroes who helped end a war.
Gentlemen, I look at you and I think of the words of Stephen Spender's poem. You are men who in your 'lives fought for life...and left the vivid air signed with your honor'...
Forty summers have passed since the battle that you fought here. You were young the day you took these cliffs; some of you were hardly more than boys, with the deepest joys of life before you. Yet you risked everything here. Why? Why did you do it? What impelled you to put aside the instinct for self-preservation and risk your lives to take these cliffs? What inspired all the men of the armies that met here? We look at you, and somehow we know the answer. It was faith, and belief; it was loyalty and love.
The men of Normandy had faith that what they were doing was right, faith that they fought for all humanity, faith that a just God would grant them mercy on this beachhead or on the next. It was the deep knowledge -- and pray God we have not lost it -- that there is a profound moral difference between the use of force for liberation and the use of force for conquest. You were here to liberate, not to conquer, and so you and those others did not doubt your cause. And you were right not to doubt.
You all knew that some things are worth dying for. One's country is worth dying for, and democracy is worth dying for, because it's the most deeply honorable form of government ever devised by man. All of you loved liberty. All of you were willing to fight tyranny, and you knew the people of your countries were behind you.
Some who survived the battle of June 6, 1944, are here today. Others who hoped to return never did. "Someday, Liz, I'll go back," said Private First Class Peter Robert Zanatta of the 37th engineer combat battalion, and first assault wave to hit Omaha Beach. "I'll go back and I'll see it all again. I'll see the beach, the barricades and the graves." Those words of Private Zanatta come to us from his daughter, Lisa Zanatta Henn, in a heartrending story about the event her father spoke of so often.
Private Zanatta's daughter wrote to me: "I don't know how or why I can feel this emptiness, this fear, or this determination, but I do. Maybe it's the bond I had with my father. All I know is that it brings tears to my eyes to think about my father as a 20-year-old boy having to face that beach."
Through the words of his loving daughter, who is here with us today, a D-Day veteran has shown us the meaning of this day far better than any president can. It is enough for us to say about Private Zanatta and all the men of honor and courage who fought beside him four decades ago:
We will always remember We will always be proud. We will always be prepared so we may be always free.
