Veterans and politicians gathered in Normandy today to mark the 65th anniversary of the D-Day landings on beaches in northern France that led to the Allied victory over Nazi Germany.
US president Barack Obama, British prime minister Gordon Brown, French president Nicolas Sarkozy and Canada’s prime minister Stephen Harper are taking part in a ceremony at a cemetery near Omaha Beach.
They gathered at the Franco American-led remembrance service set amidst the graves of thousands of dead US servicemen in Colleville-sur-Mer in Normandy, France.
Mr Obama paid homage to the heroes of D-Day, saying their assault on Normandy's beaches exactly 65 years ago had helped save the world from evil and tyranny.
Addressing stooped, white-haired veterans, Mr Obama said the Second World War represented a special moment in history when nations fought together to battle a murderous ideology.
"We live in a world of competing beliefs and claims about what is true," Mr Obama said. "In such a world, it is rare for a struggle to emerge that speaks to something universal about humanity. The Second World War did that."
"It was unknowable then, but so much of the progress that would define the twentieth century, on both sides of the Atlantic, came down to the battle for a slice of beach only six miles long and two miles wide," he said.
The Colleville cemetery, with its rows of white crosses and stars of David, overlooks the Omaha Beach landing where US forces on June 6th, 1944, suffered their greatest casualties in the assault against heavily fortified German defences.
Actor Tom Hanks, who played Captain John H Miller in the film Saving Private Ryanwhich dramatises the horror of the Omaha landing in its opening sequence, was amongst guests. The film's director Steven Spielberg was also invited to attend.
In his speech Mr Sarkozy spoke of two armies, the American and the British/ Canadian, which set out that fateful day.
He said: “The Battle of Normandy decided the outcome of the war.
“It was won on the beaches and along the narrow lanes and hedgerows of the Norman countryside by the sons of American workers and farmers whose own fathers had fought in the Meuse-Argonne offensive in 1918, by British soldiers who embodied the fighting spirit of a great people that had stood firm in the most terrible hour of their history, and by Canadian troops who had volunteered for service in the earliest days of the conflict, not because their country was threatened, but because they were convinced it was a matter of honour.”
He also paid tribute to the soldiers of Polish 1st Armoured Division who “covered themselves in glory” as well as the Czech, Danish and Norwegian aircrews, Dutch and Belgium paratroopers and the free French SAS who fought in British uniform.
“The Battle of Normandy was won by soldiers 20 years of age who killed rather than be killed, who were afraid to die, but fought far from their homes with admirable courage against an implacable enemy, as if the fate of their own homelands was at stake,” he said.
Mr Brown said: “65 years ago in the thin light of grey dawn more than 1,000 small craft took to a rough sea on a day that will be forever a day of bravery.
“On that June morning the young of our nations stepped out on those beaches below and into history.
“As long as freedom lives their debts will never die.”
He added: “On D-Day the sounds of liberation on the march were heard across Europe.”
During his speech, Mr Obama also said D-Day showed that human destiny was not determined by forces beyond its control but by individual choices and joint action.
On a more personal note, he also saluted his grandfather, Stanley Dunham, who arrived in Normandy a month after D-Day, and also his great uncle, Charles Payne, who was in the first American division during the war and was present on Saturday.
"No man who shed blood or lost a brother would say that war is good. But all know that this war was essential," he said.
It has become a tradition for American presidents to visit Normandy. Ronald Reagan went to the D-Day beaches the 40th anniversary in 1984, Bill Clinton was there 10 years later and George W. Bush was there in both 2002 and in 2004.
"I am not the first American president to come and mark this anniversary, and I likely will not be the last," he said.
Agencies