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
When Noonan was assigned to write the Pointe du Hoc speech, she was not dispatched to make an on-site inspection of the hallowed place. She had not, in fact, even met Ronald Reagan. "I can't write well," she complained once, "without hearing the person I'm writing for talk in conversation." A former CBS News writer for Dan Rather, Noonan was somehow expected to pen an "impressionistic" speech for a president she did not know about a place she had never seen.
The place itself, though, was spectacular. No matter what the day or hour or tide, standing on top of the craggy hundred-foot-high promontory is an awesome experience. This was it, the exact spot where the Army's 2nd Ranger Battalion made its fearless attack. Some of the German bunkers and blockhouses were still intact, having survived both the Allied bombing and nature's wrath. Rusted barbed-wire fencing was also still evident after 40 years. The Pointe du Hoc Ranger Monument--a dagger-shaped granite pylon--was going to be unveiled the afternoon of Reagan's speech, overlooking the Channel. It had been erected by the French to honor Col. Earl Rudder of Texas and his 2nd Rangers; Rudder's Rangers they were called. Michael Deaver, the Reagan aide who orchestrated the Pointe du Hoc ceremony, seized on the simple beauty of the monument, already seeing the president's address there as part of the Reagan bio film to be shown at the Republican National Convention, in August. "I knew it would be our backdrop for the year," Deaver recalled. "Reagan's love of America and pride in World War II was just so real. He pined for that time, for those days that were gone. He'd say, 'You know, it used to be that if our country was in trouble, if a crisis was at hand, you just pinned a little American flag on your lapel and nobody harmed you. Nobody touched you.'"
Deaver was aware--as Noonan wasn't--that some 60 Pointe du Hoc veterans would be attending the Reagan speech (62 actually showed up). Deaver, however, had one hurdle to overcome if he wanted Reagan's speech to be delivered at 1:20 p.m. at the site of the Pointe du Hoc Ranger Monument: the French government. President François Mitterrand, the host of the D-Day ceremonies, insisted that Reagan meet for a photo op before he spoke at the Pointe. He wanted the ceremonies to take place later in the afternoon. But Deaver knew if he capitulated to Mitterrand's preferences, his boss wouldn't be on the all-important U.S. morning TV shows. According to the Washington Post 's Lou Cannon, Deaver pressed the French ambassador to the United States, Bernard Vernier-Palliez, to not make waves and to approve the 1:20 p.m. time slot. The scheduling change, eventually, was made.
Following a mid-May press briefing at the Pentagon, Noonan had a eureka moment--many of the surviving 2nd Ranger Battalion members would be sitting in the front rows when Reagan spoke at Pointe du Hoc. They wouldn't be scattered haphazardly around the audience; they would be crunched together like choirboys in New England pews. Not only that, she learned, the new memorial at Pointe du Hoc would also be unveiled. Noonan scrapped her early drafts of the speech and started over. "There were some ways in which the Reagan speechwriting department was a little dysfunctional," Noonan told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution , shortly after Reagan died last year. "One of the things they did wrong was send researchers, 20-year-old kids, to the location of future speeches, along with the advance staff. The speechwriters were not sent . . . . I didn't know until shortly before the president left for Europe that the boys of Pointe du Hoc--the old men who were the U.S. Rangers who took the cliffs of Normandy--would be there, in the first few rows, as RR spoke. I was indignant: How could you not tell me? RR will want to talk to them, not just talk over their heads! And thus, in the last days, 'These are the boys of Pointe du Hoc' was born."
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