U.S. defense chief marks 63rd anniversary of D-Day at Normandy

~ Robert Gates attended a ceremony and dedication of a visitor's center at the Normandy American Cemetery.

COLLEVILLE-SUR-MER, France -- Above a cliff of silent reminders, Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Wednesday evoked the image of fallen warriors to mark the 63rd anniversary of the Normandy D-Day landings that turned the tide of World War II.

The bloody beach assault June 6, 1944, "unfolded as if it were a lifetime" for the young men who braved German guns, Gates said, looking out upon a vast field of white grave markers on a rainy, chilly day.

Gates attended the anniversary ceremony and dedication Wednesday of a visitor's center at the Normandy American Cemetery, the burial ground for 9,387 war dead, most of whom lost their lives in the amphibious assault and subsequent operations.

In remarks at the midday ceremony, Gates said U.S. and allied soldiers landed at Normandy to destroy entrenched forces of oppression "so that this nation, this continent and this world could one day know the tidings of peace."

He tied the memory of Normandy to the challenge of today's war on terrorism.

"We once again face enemies seeking to destroy our way of life, and we are once again engaged in an ideological struggle that may not find resolution for many years or even decades," he said.

Speaking before Gates was Walter Ehlers, a Medal of Honor recipient who landed at Omaha Beach as a young Army staff sergeant -- an experience he recalled in vivid detail.

"We weren't prepared for the chaos and all the disasters," he said.

Gates was accompanied by the new French defense minister, Herve Morin. Gates used their moment together to highlight the traditional bonds between France and the United States -- ties that have been badly strained recently by the war in Iraq and other differences between Paris and Washington.

"Minister Morin, events like this also remind us of all we have endured together -- remind us of our long history in times of war and in times of peace -- remind us of the shared values that transcend what differences we may have had in the past, or may have in the present," Gates said.

'The advance of freedom'

In his own remarks, Morin said D-Day has lasting importance for his country.

"For the French it was the beginning of the advance of freedom," he said.

When he arrived in Paris on Tuesday evening Gates became the first U.S. defense secretary to visit the French capital in nearly 10 years.

In his Normandy speech, Gates painted a painful sketch of the D-Day misery and death, noting that it was preceded June 5 by the movement of an enormous mass of men and ships that sailed across the English Channel.

"For those who were here, the next day, June 6, unfolded as if it were a lifetime," he said. "Men who had only recently felt the warmth of their families now felt the frigid waters of the English Channel and the lonely sands of a war-torn, wind-swept beachhead.

"Men who had just a few months earlier been boys in the midst of adolescence suddenly found themselves traversing a warren of lethal obstacles on beaches named Omaha, Utah, Gold, Juno and Sword."

Gates recalled emotions of young men facing death in a foreign land.

"Captain Frank Corder of Texas stepped onto the beach and, as bullets and bombs whizzed by, said, `This is no place for Mrs. Corder's little boy Frank,"' Gates said.

"Ahead of Mrs. Corder's little boy and all the troops pushing inland still lay hundreds of thousands of determined enemies ready to fight in the hedgerows and apple orchards or Normandy, in the forests of the Ardennes and finally in the narrow streets of German villages."

After the ceremony Gates visited Pointe du Hoc, where U.S. Army Rangers scaled sheer cliffs on D-Day, taking heavy casualties, to overrun German gun emplacements that were deemed a threat to the Omaha Beach landing.