As the wife of a Navy enlistee during the Vietnam War, I can say that my military life still remains a strong and humbling memory in my life. The comraderie is unlike any bond I’ve seen… from soldiers and shipmates to their families. Their unquestioned loyalty to freedom, liberty and this country is uncomprehendable to most civilians. During decades of wars conducted on foreign soils – indeed even the strategic and import of these missions being even more foreign to the layman’s understanding – the sense of ultimate sacrifice of self for fellow Americans and country has suffered from lack of respect. Nay… has even been demeaned by some with words and spittal.

With this diminished view of our nation’s warriors in mind, I settled on honoring that less heralded and honored Marine crew of WWII, the Code Talkers.

I have no intention of deliberately slighting any of the 18 tribes that contributed Code Talkers to the great battlefield. For all Code Talkers returned to their reservation homes as heroes without a heroes’ welcome. Very little was revealed of their role in order to reserve this uniquely Native American communication system for future conflicts. But little by little over the decades, more has come out of their importance in the war, and the untold many lives they saved.

So with both an honored bow to not only the Native American tribes, and our remaining veterans and currently serving military personnel, I devote this post to the story of the more well known Navajo Code Talkers of the USMC.

AP’s Ula Ilnytkzy had a story today that also acknowledges the Code Talkers… but touches on their fear that their legacy will die with them. Out of the 400 Code Talkers, only 50 are believed to be alive. Thirteen of them came to NYC – many using canes – to walk in the Veterans Day parade today.

The young Navajo Marines, using secret Navajo language-encrypted military terms, helped the U.S. prevail at Iwo Jima and other World War II Pacific battles, serving in every Marine assault in the South Pacific between 1942 and 1945. Military commanders said the code, transmitted verbally by radio, helped save countless American lives and bring a speedier end to the war in the Pacific theater.

They were sworn to secrecy about their code, so complex that even other Navajo Marines couldn’t decipher it. Used to transmit secret tactical messages via radio or telephone, the code remained unbroken and classified for decades because of its potential postwar use.

“We were never told that our code was never decoded” or given identities of the original 29 Navajos who created it, said Keith Little, 85, who joined the Marines at 17 and remembers crouching in a bomb crater amid heavy fire on Iwo Jima.

“It was all covered by secrecy. We were constantly told not to talk about it,” Little said. The Code Talkers felt compelled to honor their secrecy orders, even after the code was declassified in 1968.

~~~

“The code did a lot of damage to the enemy,” said Samuel Tom Holiday, 85, of Kayenta, Ariz., who also is joining the parade. He was a 20-year-old Code Talker when he and two other Marines went behind enemy lines on Iwo Jima to locate a Japanese artillery unit advancing on American forces.

Once the unit was located, Holiday transmitted a coded message to Marine artillery, which fired a big shell at the Japanese. After the Marine rifleman proclaimed it “right on target,” Holiday messaged “Right on Target” to a Navajo Code Talker in Marine artillery.

Prior to the entry of the original 29 Navajo Code Talkers, the Japanese – armed with exceptional English speaking code breakers – swiftly thwarted every attempt at a secure communication code between the allies. But the Japanese didn’t reckon with America’s first citizens.

Per the story on the Official Navajo Code Talkers website, it was Phillip Johnston – a California civilian and son of a Protestant missionary who grew up on a Navajo reservation and one of the few outsiders fluent in their difficult language – who came up with the idea to create a code using the Native American Navajo and pitched it to Major General Clayton B. Vogel, the commanding general of Amphibious Corps, Pacific Fleet, and his staff.

With plenty of fluent English speakers at their disposal, they [the Japanese] sabotaged messages and issued false commands to ambush Allied troops. To combat this, increasingly complex codes were initiated. At Guadalcanal, military leaders finally complained that sending and receiving these codes required hours of encryption and decryption—up to two and a half hours for a single message. They rightly argued the military needed a better way to communicate.

He realized that since it had no alphabet and was almost impossible to master without early exposure, the Navajo language had great potential as an indecipherable code. After an impressive demonstration to top commanders, he was given permission to begin a Navajo Code Talker test program.

Their elite unit was formed in early 1942 when the first 29 Navajo Code Talkers were recruited by Johnston. Although the code was modified and expanded throughout the war, this first group was the one to conceive it. Accordingly, they are often referred to reverently as the “original 29″. Many of these enlistees were just boys; most had never been away from home before. Often lacking birth certificates, it was impossible to verify ages. After the war it was discovered that recruits as young as 15 and as old as 35 had enlisted. Age notwithstanding, they easily bore the rigors of basic training, thanks to their upbringing in the southwestern desert.

One of the original 29, now 92, was present for today’s Veteran’s Day Parade in NYC.

The young native Americans gathered at Camp Pendleton and devised an ingenious code of 200 terms, which grew to 600 by the war’s victory. What took coding machines 30 minutes to do could now be transmitted in 20 seconds – accurate, concise and undecipherable by the enemy.

It consisted of native terms that were associated with the respective military terms they resembled. For example, the Navajo word for turtle meant “tank,” and a dive-bomber was a “chicken hawk.” To supplement those terms, words could be spelled out using Navajo terms assigned to individual letters of the alphabet—the selection of the Navajo term being based on the first letter of the Navajo word’s English meaning. For instance, “Wo-La-Chee” means “ant,” and would represent the letter “A”. In this way the Navajo Code Talkers could quickly and concisely communicate with each other in a manner even uninitiated Navajos could not understand.

According to Katrena Wells on the WWII history site, there was only 30 or less non-Navajos that could speak the language at the beginning of WWII. In fact, translation of this new code baffled even the untrained Navajo soldiers themselves.

The Navajo language, which was spoken on Navajo reservations in the American Southwest, was unwritten and quite complex as it relied on the use of tone, syntax, and dialects. A Navajo soldier that was not trained as a code talker became a prisoner of war at Bataan and was forced to listen to transmissions in his own tongue. The Fact Sheet cited above quotes that Navajo soldier after the war as saying, “I never figured out what you guys who got me into all that trouble were saying.”

After training, they were sent to the Pacific theatre. Forbidden to write anything that referenced the code and it’s secrets, these Native American warriors became “living codes”, with the military taking great lengths to insure their survival. It was of this unique focus on particular soldiers’ lives that the Nicholas Cage/Christian Slater 2002 movie, “Windtalkers”, was born. In typical Hollywood versions of history, what was not made clear was that the Code Talkers were not only transmitters, but often performed the functions of messengers, along with the duties and responsibilities of any other Marine.

Left—Right: Cpt. Johnny Manuelito (Naschitti, NM); John Benally (Fort Defiance, AZ), Pvt. Rex Kontz (Fort Defiance, AZ), Howard Billiman (Sawmill, AZ), Peter Tracey (Ganado, AZ) Design the NTC Project: Tech Sgt. Phillip Johnson (Leupp, AZ)

Praise for their skill, speed and accuracy accrued throughout the war. At Iwo Jima, Major Howard Connor, 5th Marine Division signal officer, declared, “Were it not for the Navajos, the Marines would never have taken Iwo Jima.” Connor had six Navajo code talkers working around the clock during the first two days of the battle. Those six sent and received over 800 messages, all without error.

In this Sunday, Oct. 4, 2009 photo, Keith Little, 85, of Crystal, N.M., attends a book signing with fellow Navajo Code Talkers in Albuquerque, N.M. Little will join 12 other Navajo Code Talkers in the New York City Veteran’s Day Parade on Wednesday, Nov. 11. Navajo Marines helped the U.S. prevail at Iwo Jima and other World War II Pacific battles with an unbreakable code that stymied the Japanese. The code of Navajo language-encrypted military terms used to transit secret tactical messages was classified for decades after the war – and was so complex that even Navajos Marines who weren’t in the elite unit could’t decipher it. (AP Photo/Felicia Fonseca)

Code Talker Keith Little, 85 (pictured above) was one of those in Iwo Jima.. where in the first 48 hours they coded over 800 transmissions with perfect accuracy alone.

Despite their importance and value, the Code Talkers returned home, ordered to remain silent on their skills and communication codes. It took decades before their code was declassified in 1968.

Long overdue for official recognition, George H. Bush’s Department of Defense honored 35 former Marine Code Talkers at the Pentagon in September, 1992.

Thirty-five code talkers, all veterans of the U.S. Marine Corps, attended the dedication of the Navajo code talker exhibit. The exhibit includes a display of photographs, equipment and the original code, along with an explanation of how the code worked.

Dedication ceremonies included speeches by the then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Donald Atwood, U.S. Senator John McCain of Arizona and Navajo President Peterson Zah. The Navajo veterans and their families traveled to the ceremony from their homes on the Navajo Reservation, which includes parts of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah.

The Navajo code talker exhibit is a regular stop on the Pentagon tour.

It took another nine years before another Bush… this time the son, George W… again honored the Navajo Code Talkers by presenting four of five living Code Talkers, plus the relatives of 24 others, with the Congressional Medal of Honor in an afternoon ceremony in the Capitol Rotunda in 2001. [Mata Note: link is to a July 2001 CNN story of the ceremony presentation]

“Today we give these exceptional Marines the recognition they earned so long ago,” Bush said. The president said they brought honor to the United States as well as the Navajo Nation.

“Our gratitude is now expressed for all time in the medals you are about to receive,” he said.

Before Bush presented the medals, the names of the code talkers were read aloud and those attending the event gave them a standing ovation.

“It is, I think, one of the greatest honors that you can bestow on the code talkers,” said code talker Chester Nez. “I’m really happy about it.”

~~~

“When we went into the Marine Corps, we didn’t know what it was that we were going to do,” said Nez. “But after we got out of boot camp and went to a place called Camp Elliot … and there was the first time we found out that we was to use our own language to translate in the combat area.

“All of the 29 Marines that I went in [with], we got together and made a code in our own language. There were over 400 or 500 words that we made up at that time. We memorized them and everything was up here,” Nez said, pointing to his head.

“And nobody knew. The Japanese pulled all of their hair out trying to decipher the code. But it’s one of the hardest languages to learn, that’s why it was never decoded or deciphered.”

But like their ancestors and our warriors today, these quiet heroes never demanded recognition, nor craved the spotlight. Yet for posterity, such a breed of Americans should not be lost to history and their stories buried.

“They really weren’t given any special recognition,” Melson** said. “Most of them I don’t think wanted special recognition, other than that they had done their duty and they had survived, because there was a lot of people that they knew who did not survive.”

[**Mata musing: Chuck Melson, chief historian for the U.S. Marine Corps]

“This was a chapter of our military history that has not been given sufficient attention, and there are some real genuine heroes here who deserve recognition,” said Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-New Mexico, who sponsored the congressional resolution to honor the code talkers. The Navajo reservation is in New Mexico and Arizona.

Such is the stuff of American heroes. And the Code Talkers stand tall amongst the best of them this Veterans Day. Many in this nation owe our very existance to their superb service, for it may have been our parents or grandparents who’s lives they saved. We are forever grateful for their innovative skills, and their dedication to fight for their homeland against foreign enemies.

Morgan Styke, 5, stands in a formation with her dad, Sgt. Jeremy Charlet, at a dismissal ceremony for his NG unit Monday at the Civic Center in New Ulm, Minn. The New Ulm-based 125th Field Artillary HQ and HQ Battery unit returned home after 22 months of active duty.
john Cross, Mankato (Minn.) Free Press, via AP

To all those who have served in our Armed Forces and to all those currently serving, a heartfelt

Besides local children, the Obamas also entertained those of military families as well as White House staff.

Apprently, every day is Halloween dress-up for these zombies, who never see an occasion where it is inappropriate to protest:

Members of the protest group Code Pink taunt local school children with chants about the war in Afghanistan as the children and their families arrive for a Halloween reception by U.S. President Barack Obama and his family at the White House in Washington, October 31, 2009.
REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst (UNITED STATES CONFLICT POLITICS SOCIETY)

Muwahahahahaha!

U.S. President Barack Obama greets children during a reception for children of military and White House staff families for Halloween at the White House in Washington October 31, 2009. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst (UNITED STATES POLITICS HEADSHOT)

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!

Stay safe, have fun….trick or tweet…..and distribute YOUR OWN candy!

Ward Churchill (remember him?) references the book, Smallpox and the American Indian, during his testimony in his civil suit against the University of Colorado at the City and County Building in Denver, Colorado March 23, 2009. Churchill is suing the University of Colorado for wrongful termination.
AP photo.

Today, I picked up 2 kids I carpool to the gymnastics club from their magnet school, as I do every Monday. Apparently, there was no mention about Columbus Day. Nada. Zippo. Nothing negative or positive. But they did watch a performance by dancers dressed like Mayan/Aztec Indians; and the older one said it was “Latino Heritage month”.

This school was closed for Yom Kippur (where 99% of the kids are black and Hispanic). But they were open today, with no mention of Columbus, but did celebrate “Latino heritage”. Oooookaaay…..

I’m recognizing my country, less and less, as time wears on….

While Federal government offices in Washington, D.C. are closed for Columbus Day, students in Maryland, just a few miles away, have a full school day. What was once a guaranteed day off from work is now a gamble, with many schools and workplaces open on Columbus Day.

Columbus Day is not commemorated universally. Federal and state offices are closed, the United States Postal Service will not deliver mail, and many banks are shuttered.

But public schools in large cities like Los Angeles, Miami and Dallas are open, while in Washington, DC, New York City and Chicago they are closed

It has been a growing trend for more than 20 years.

Today, I am reminded that our military are also toiling daily… sans days off and always on call. And while all deserve mention and our respect, I’m here to tell you the story of just one crew, from one crew member’s personal story.

On Sept. 14th, the Crew of Torqe 05, 40th Airlift Squadron, Dyess AFB, Texas, will be the recipient of the Lt. General William H. Tunner Award for 2009 in a ceremony at the Air & Space Conference and Technology Exposition in Washington DC.

To examine the honor of this award, we might want to first examine the man for whom it was named… Lt. Gen. William H. Tunner, the most outstanding authority on airlift operations of the United States Air Force (and Army Air Corp in WWII). The below are excepts from a biography, written by a grateful recipient of Tunner’s “Candy Bombers” in Germany as a young girl.

Lt. Gen. Tunner first helped orginally create, the “Air Corps Ferrying Command” divisions in the early 40s.

July 1942, the name “Ferrying Command” was changed to Air Transport Command. General Tunner, by now a Colonel, was made Commanding Officer of the Ferrying Division. At that time, this division was ferrying 10,000 aircraft monthly to the Allied Forces, which was of vital importance in the early days of World War II.

In Sept of 1944, then Col. Tunner was called to command “The Hump” airlift transport of supplies to the Chinese people in the China-Burma-India theatre of the war. It was there he demonstrated his exceptional abilities to organize efficient and successful airlift missions.

This was the legendary “Hump” airlift, so named because the airplanes had to clear the 16,000 foot high Himalaya Mountains. And even though all air traffic had to be channeled over this enormously high range, Tunner and his crews delivered 71,000 tons of material to China, far beyond what had ever been carried by air before. In OVER THE HUMP, published in 1964, he told of his experiences in this operation.

The Hump airlift laid the foundation for his next, and even more famous airlift mission four years later, The Berlin Airlift – a mission defying all odds and embarrassing the Russians by supplying what was then the fifth largest city in the world (2.5 million people plus 6000 occupation troops), by air alone. In a ten month period, over 2.3 tons of supplies were flown into the city, dwarfing even future airlift operations. For example, between 1992 and 1997, there was a total of 179,910 tons brought into Sarajevo – less than the amount flown into Berlin in merely one month.

The Berlin Airlift earned a later Maj. General William Tunner, and his airlift crews, the H.H. Arnold Award in 1949.

From all over the world, veteran Air Force personnel had been jerked from their peacetime homes and were now flying endlessly through three 20-mile-wide air corridors, which were the only means of access.

The immensity and the danger of the mission should never be forgotten. In the heavy-laden and slow cargo planes, the pilots would have been clay pigeons for Russian fighter aircraft if Moscow had chosen to block the air lanes, too. Day after day the planes kept coming. The runways were repaired. A third airport (Tegel) was built. The crews were rotated. The planes refurbished and augmented. And the tonnage crept upward and upward, reaching the 4,000 daily minimum, then exceeding it, and eventually, in the spring of 1949, reaching the old pre-blockade level.

There were bad weather periods, and hard weeks, and frightening moments, but the personnel and General Tunner continued to perform and enlarge upon the miracle, which was lovingly known as “Operation Vittles”. Because of the masterful direction by General Tunner and his crews, the airlift was succeeding far beyond all calculations. By May 1949 the battle was finally over and won. Once again General Tunner had set new records for tons of food, material and coal into Berlin, and flying a total of 124.5 million miles. He had also proven that great bodies of troops, or great numbers of civilians, could be sustained by air transport alone.

It was a William Tunner, with the rank of General by then, who was called in to repeat this extraordinary airlift performance during the Korean War… a success by both commander and crews that earned General Tunner an on-the-spot Distinguished Service Cross from General Douglas MacArthur.

By the time he retired from the Service May 31, 1960, he had successfully organized and commanded the three largest airlift operations up to that time.

The first recipients of this award I can find was a 1st SOW Combat Talon crew for mission “Urgent Fury” in 1983, and after Tunner’s death in April of 1983. This was a seven day operation, centered at Point Salines Airport, effecting the rescue of Americans from Grenada. Since then, many crews have been honored annually for their outstanding contributions. And indeed, there is illustrious company.

So today I pass on the story of the 2009 recipients of the Lt. General William H. Tunner Award.

Greetings all,

As you may know by now ( thanks mom), my last desert crew is the recipient of the Lt. General William H. Tunner Award for 2009, The Crew of Torqe 05, 40th Airlift Squadron, Dyess AFB, Texas.

“The award is given to recognize extraordinary achievement by the most outstanding airlift crew in the United States Air Force.” We will be presented with the award on Monday, September 14th at the Air & Space Conference and Technology Exposition in Washington DC.

So how did we get this honor? Funny you should ask. Let me share a story with you.

So there we were, just a few minutes into a long flight from Kuwait to one of our bases in Africa. As our plane climbed out we detected a faint, but growing, odor in the aircraft. Strange smells in flight are rarely a good thing. As the odor got stronger we discussed returning to base. In the meantime, we were trying to find out the origin of the offending smell. We soon made the decision to don our oxygen masks and emergency depressurize the aircraft in order to evacuate the now very acrid fumes.

A little about donning oxygen in flight (for your education), we have helmets much like those seen on any cheesy war flight movie, with masks that fit over our headsets. There are also four portable oxygen bottles to use when we have to move about the aircraft. These portable bottles can be refilled from the aircrafts oxygen supply as needed. That point will be important later in my story. The passengers, we had five, two crew chiefs and three security forces, had to put what amounts to a plastic bag with an oxygen generating canister attached, over their heads.

As I said before, we made the decision to done oxygen, depressurize, open a top hatch and evacuate the fumes from the aircraft. This is standard procedure for smoke and fumes elimination. Unfortunately, in situations like this, things are rarely standard. As I began the procedure, blink, a loss of hydraulic pressure light illuminated. Now, I thought, I may have bigger problems. I called for the loadmaster in the back to check our #1 hydraulic system and make sure it has fluid in the reservoir. After all, it may just be a false indication. No, unfortunately, it was not a false indicator. We lost the entire system, which meant no flaps, no landing gear, and one-half of our hydraulic assist for the flight controls were gone. So we did have bigger problems!

Wait, this gets even better!

We continue the fumes evacuation, which never fully dissipates so we must remain on oxygen. I now have to use one of the portable oxygen bottles to work on getting the landing gear and flaps down. The pilots are calling back to the base, declaring an emergency so we can get priority landing, and have all fire and rescue ready as we turn back to base.

Oh, by the way, the passengers are now passing out!

Passing out! As if we didn’t have enough to do already. The passengers had put the EPOS, emergency personal oxygen system, ‘bags’ over their heads and were now passing out. Well there goes one of the two loadmasters to help these guys breath. We would find out later they were improperly activating the bottles rendering them useless, and suffocating themselves in the process. Five guys would eventually go through sixty EPOS’ before we landed. This had never happened before.

After we got the guys breathing again, it was time to try and get the flaps and gear down so we could land.

That’s where I come in with the portable oxygen canisters.

To lower the flaps I must go through a process to release the brake and then hand crank the flaps down. This takes some time and effort which means heavy breathing for a big guy. Heavy breathing while on portable oxygen meant that I would go through a bottle in about a minute. So, one loadmaster fills a bottle, takes about a minute, the other swaps mine out as soon as its empty, in about a minute, and the process continues over and over again. While I’m hand cranking the flaps down, we are in communication with the pilots to slow the aircraft so as not to over-speed the flaps.

OK, passengers are breathing, the flaps are finally down, and it’s time to lower the gear. This is a simple process on our aircraft so there’s not much to tell here. We can free fall the gear and just verify a down and locked position for landing. But since we lost the #1, or utility hydraulic system, we have no steering once we land! All we can do is hope we can stay on the runway! This shouldn’t be too bad really, as long as the pilot remembers not to touch the nose wheel steering and the crosswinds are mild. Either one would send us shooting off into the sand.

Obviously, we landed safely. You would have heard about this sooner if we hadn’t. As soon as we stopped on the runway, we got the hell off that aircraft. The cops that passed out were hauled off to the hospital to be checked out while we got a pat on the back and asked the question of the day, “we have another plane which can be ready in about ten minutes if you want to take that one to Africa.” We took it.

Al

Thanks to the training, and efficiency under duress, they and their precious human cargo are not being mourned by families. Nor are they fodder for the nightly news, and part of another statistic to be used for political purposes.

Instead they will be honored, along with others receiving various National Aerospace Awards. And I could not be more proud, and thrilled at the outcome. You see, this young Air Force crew member is my nephew… one of two serving our country in the USAF.

Something uplifting for you, courtesy of Savannah writer, Carol Megathlin.

It’s the story of a small US flag, transferred into the hands of a SC soldier deployed to Iraq, and it’s return home… with the soldier. Per Carol, now in possession of that flag, it’s worn and weary from the experiences… much like that young soldier. But, like that soldier, that flag is a cherished possession.

Read, and be of good cheer and pride in America’s finest…. our military.

On the wall next to my computer hangs a small American flag. It is tattered and dirty, but there is no way I will ever part with this little flag.

It was put into my hands on July 1, 2008, by First Sergeant Jovito Casanova as I stood at Hunter Army Airfield in Savannah. I was there to welcome home 3rd Infantry Division troops returning from Iraq.

As he handed me the flag, I gave him my email address and asked him to tell me its story. Only recently was he willing to talk about his 14 months in one of the most dangerous places in Iraq. Here is the story he recounted in an email.

“It was late in the night when we were loading the aircraft out of Hunter Army Airfield and I noticed up ahead there were a handful of volunteers handing out small American flags. I remember feeling how nice it was to have them come to see us off when it felt we were the only ones who knew we were leaving.

“I grabbed a flag from an older gentleman. I could barely fit it in my pack and I didn’t think it would make the flight without breaking.

“We eventually arrived in Iraq. After initial in-processing into country we moved by rotary aircraft to Forward Operating Base Falcon. We lived in large tents that accommodated roughly 20 soldiers.

“The flag I received was stuffed into my assault pack and I remember looking at the flag, surprised that it had survived the loading and unloading of bags and equipment so far. I looked around the tent and I noticed a few other flags sticking out of corners of tents and tops of rucksacks. Mine found a place above my head held up by a piece of thin green lanyard.

Continue reading here….

Got plans for July 4th? Live in or around Philly? The Tea Party 3 is not to be missed!

The Philly Tea Party this past April 18th was a remarkable success and the organizers want to keep the passion and conversation alive with Tea Party 3 – Independence Hall.

You can read more about the organizers and the event at their website: Independence Hall Tea Party Association

INDEPENDENCE HALL TEA PARTY III

A Celebratory Picnic Commemorating 233 years of American Independence!

July 4th, 2009
Noon-3PM
Independence Mall
5th and Chestnut Streets
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Bring a Picnic Basket and a Lawn Chair!

Featuring: Talk Show Host Dom Giordano; Notable Speakers on Cap and Trade,
Universal Health Care, EFCA, FOCA; Information Tables;
Activities for Children; Musical Entertainment;
Tea Party Sign Contest – Best Design, Best Message;
Colonial Costume Contest – Best Overall, Best Founding Father/Mother

Contact us via email at http://www.floppingaces.net/?p=22870 So many fine historical posts on D Day today, but so many of those memories are in black and white. I did find this video in color. A rarity at the time:

Again from the US Army’s webpage on D-Day, a General’s message to his troops. The page has a link to the audio. Below, the transcript.

Soldiers, Sailors and Airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Force! You are about to embark upon a great crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes and prayers of liberty loving people everywhere march with you. In company with our brave Allies and brothers in arms on other fronts, you will bring about the destruction of the German war machine, the elimination of Nazi tyranny over the oppressed peoples of Europe, and security for ourselves in a free world.

Your task will not be an easy one. Your enemy is well trained, well equipped and battle hardened, he will fight savagely.

But this is the year 1944! Much has happened since the Nazi triumphs of 1940-41. The United Nations have inflicted upon the Germans great defeats, in open battle, man to man. Our air offensive has seriously reduced their strength in the air and their capacity to wage war on the ground. Our home fronts have given us an overwhelming superiority in weapons and munitions of war, and placed at our disposal great reserves of trained fighting men. The tide has turned! The free men of the world are marching together to victory!

I have full confidence in your courage, devotion to duty and skill in battle. We will accept nothing less than full victory!

Good Luck! And let us all beseech the blessings of Almighty God upon this great and noble undertaking.

– Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower

Lastly, a page of tributes and news articles guaranteed to touch your heart the Army’s “news” page.

Medic honors grandfather’s legacy on Normandy beach
June 5, 2009 – By: Sgt. Fay Conroy

Normandy residents show servicememebers supporting D-Day anniversary some hometown hospitality
June 5, 2009 – By: Tech. Sgt. Michael Voss, 435th Air Base Wing Public Affairs

D-Day commentary: Values bind servicememebers together across span of time
June 4, 2009 – By: Spc. Adrienne Killingsworth, 18th Military Police Brigade Public Affairs Office

Brussels Soldiers meet D-Day veterans
June 4, 2009 – By: Thad Moyseowicz, U.S. Army Garrison Brussels Public Affairs

Stryker sergeants relive history by recreating image of Soldiers taken on D-Day
June 4, 2009 – By: Tech. Sgt. Michael Voss, 435th Air Base Wing Public Affairs Office

Chance meeting brings cavalry sergeant face-to-face with D-Day veteran
June 4, 2009 – By: Air Force Tech. Sgt. Michael Voss

Airborne museum houses one-of-a-kind artifacts that honor historic jump during D-Day invasion
June 3, 2009 – By: Sgt. Fay Conroy, 21st Theater Sustainment Command Public Affairs

Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen living and working together to support 65th anniversary of D-Day
June 3, 2009 – By: Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class (AW) Chris Henry

Church tower, windows pay tribute to paratroopers who jumped into first town liberated during World War II
June 2, 2009 – By: Sgt. Fay Conroy

Soldiers prep to support D-Day ceremonies for 65th anniversary of invasion
June 1, 2009 – By: Spc. Adrienne Killingsworth

Remarks by President Ronald Reagan on the 40th Anniversary of D-Day
delivered 6 June 1984 in Pointe Du Hoc, Normandy, France

Full text here.

Mata has the video below.

More photos:

President Reagan greeting former U.S. Rangers at Pointe du Hoc, Normandy, France. 6/6/84