Remembering Reagan
"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." Ronald Reagan, June 6, 1984 Pointe du Hoc, Normandy, France
Behind the Speech
A relative newcomer to the White House, speechwriter Peggy Noonan had impressed her boss Dick Darman with her early work and, to the chagrin of some others, was handed the task of preparing Reagan's words at Normandy. How Noonan went about writing the Pointe du Hoc speech can now be fully discerned by reading the files archived at the Reagan Presidential Library (and also from a wonderful memoir Noonan wrote titled What I Saw at the Revolution ). As in all speechwriting, the first step in Noonan's laborious process consisted of gathering usable data about D-Day. The 34-year-old speechwriter devoted to elegant New Yorker- style prose cast a wide net, searching for inspired ideas from all corners. She received input from various foreign-policy fiefdoms. The State Department weighed in with a bland memo and a "country report" on France, cold and factual.
Reagan's 10-day visit to Ireland, Great Britain, and France would be more than a drawn-out D-Day remembrance, Noonan knew. As the itinerary dictated, after three nights in Ireland, Reagan would fly to London. The idea was for Reagan and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher to spend June 5 together showcasing Anglo-American unity before crossing the Channel for the Normandy ceremony. On June 6, they would visit three spots in France: Pointe du Hoc, the American cemetery at Colleville-sur-Mer, and Utah Beach. "Normandy symbolizes the U.S. commitment to Europe, which led directly to the Atlantic Alliance," National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane wrote in a briefing paper for the president. "The President will make brief (10-15 minutes) remarks at the Point [sic] du Hoc ceremony to about 5,000 people, including veteran groups. This should be emotional, stirring, and personal. The themes include reconciliation of former adversaries, how postwar cooperation has kept the peace for the longest period in modern European history, Alliance solidarity, and the strength of the American commitment to Europe."
What McFarlane worried about was Reagan's not alienating West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, who had been banned from the Normandy ceremonies. In order that Kohl not feel too "bruised," McFarlane wanted the Reagan speech to focus on reconciliation. Given that, Noonan, who was then unaware that so many D-Day veterans would be in attendance, was somewhat hamstrung. An astute student of Reagan, she knew, however, that he was at his best when he told heartfelt stories about real people. Her boss was instinctive, blessed with a genuine showbiz gift for lively narrative and fabulist history. She didn't want to grind his address down just to please the men at State and the NSC.
As Noonan read Cornelius Ryan's The Longest Day, John Keegan's Six Armies in Normandy, and Jean Compagnon's The Normandy Landings, she realized anew just how unbelievably dramatic the D-Day invasion was. Somehow, she would have to cut through the bureaucratic thicket and find a way for Reagan to talk emotionally about the heroism of these men with the same uplifting conviction of an FDR. It wasn't a difficult task. Susceptible as he was to theatrics and imbued with a lifelong enthusiasm for symbolism, Reagan would choke up, Noonan knew, at all the perfect white crosses and Stars of David in the Colleville-sur-Mer cemetery. What she didn't know was that the story of the brave 2nd Ranger Battalion survivors--dozens of whom would be in attendance--would choke the Gipper up even more.
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