By Kevin Lonnquist
Publisher
Greetings from Pittsburgh. The RJB has returned to the steel city for a couple of days. The weather is far more tolerable as we are in the 80s.
But keeping with the theme of picking something from the trend the RJB goes back to history to the year of 1979. That was the year the Pittsburgh Pirates won the World Series, beating the Baltimore Orioles four games to three.
A team led by the late Hall of Fame great Willie Stargell. Pittsburgh rallied from a 3-1 deficit to win it all.
As such, the RJB is staying across the street from Pittsburgh’s newest field, PNC Park. The RJB has been here a couple of times. It’s a beautiful stadium, although these Pirates aren’t that great. Well, they’re not awful either.
But getting back to 1979, that takes us to this week’s selection where the Pirates theme song was Disco song from Sister Sledge. They have probably made so much off or royalties in the last 43 years that they should be swimming in cash.
Indeed, if you’ve been to a wedding and this song has been played, then you know what the RJB is talking about. If it hasn’t been played, then the DJ or the band should have been fired on the spot.
For the record it was the No. 1 song in the R&B charts in 1979 and No. 2 in the pop charts behind Donna Summer’s Hot Stuff.
*****
Obviously, as you have read above, your publisher is out of Texas through the first half of Wednesday for company meetings. These are going to be pretty much all-day affairs.
I will be out of pocket for the most part but will try and get stories of recruits or what have you relating to Baylor posted as early as I can on successive days. Just the way it works sometimes. Tuesday night into Wednesday will be a little tricky. A 4:00 am wakeup call to fly back.
When there are some breaks, I will check in to answer any questions. If I see an offer or something of note I will post when I can. If you see something, you can post it when you see fit.
*****
With the first weekend of the NCAA baseball tournament winding down, my belief is that things should pick up toward the hiring of a new baseball coach. I’ll leave the Blitz up through Monday in case you didn’t see the hot list.
My reaction to those names is what you would expect for a job that is in a P5 conference. There are some solid G5 names, a couple of P5 names between head coaches and assistants.
What’s going to be key for the new head coach is making sure he has the resources to compete at the next level and try and get Baylor baseball back to an era where it used to enjoy consistent Top 25 rankings and NCAA tournament appearances.
Steve Rodriguez didn’t keep his job because he only made the tournament in three of his seven seasons. I know I know COVID in 2020 wiped out the season but it counts.
Baylor baseball’s reputation has suffered pretty much since it lost to Arkansas in the 2012 Super Regionals. Since 2013, Baylor has been to the NCAA tournament just three times, 2017, 2018 and 2019.
Facility upgrades likely will have to be addressed at some point. Baylor Ballpark is a great park. But it and its surrounding amenities need a facelift.
Baylor AD Mack Rhoades has set a high level for all of his major programs. Football won a conference title. Men’s basketball shared a regular season conference title. Women’s basketball won a regular season conference title.
And while softball struggled, it still managed to make the postseason and win that championship. Baseball needs to do better.
BTW, there were some rumors about Baylor having an assistant athletic director in the dugout toward the end of the 2022 season to monitor Rodriguez. Accurate or not, I don’t think it matters.
What matters is the Ws and Ls. Baylor just wasn’t securing enough of those in the left-hand column. Personally, I don’t think you need an administrator in the dugout to tell you what you can see clearly on the field.
*****
I’m going to take this space to ask that everybody take a breath when it come to the hype and promotion of walk-on quarterbacks.
Over the last couple of years, we seem to have become carried away by this phenomenon. I don’t know why.
Through no fault of his own, it started with CJ Rogers who turned down some FCS offers and walked on with Baylor to see if he could ever get an opportunity. Well, as in the case of many walk ons who come through a football program, they never see the field. Or if they do, it’s in such an obscure capacity it won’t impact a game or a season.
The situation with Rogers escalated during the spring and then took off after the spring game.
To an outsider it made sense, scholarship QB Gerry Bohanon just lost the starting job to Blake Shapen and within 24 hours was in the NCAA transfer portal. That meant Baylor was down to two scholarship QBs between Shapen and Kyron Drones. That’s a little hmmmm.
But because Drones looked pretty raw in the spring game and Rogers excited everybody with his performance including the deep touchdown pass, more than one thought he should surpass Drones as the backup. Maybe he should have been considered for a scholarship.
Speculation ran amok. Well, that never happened. Rogers decided he was done waiting and left. Now, Baylor’s third quarterback is another walk-on in grad transfer and former scholarship quarterback Luke Anthony. Anthony spent his time between Abilene Christian and Louisiana Tech.
I think the social media promotion of Anthony’s arrival probably needed to be toned down a bit. Yes, he has a history in the college game. He had some success. It’s perfect for Baylor because it has the type of QB I thought it needed shortly after Bohanon left. There are some miles on the tire. Anthony is at Baylor for one year. He’s not a threat to either of the scholarship QBs. He’s an insurance policy.
Personally, with all of that going for him, I think Baylor should have put him on scholarship because it’s not like his spot on the roster was going to cause any future concerns. If anything, his history should validate he earned one.
I really could care less if Anthony’s mother is the Elon Musk of home health care. He may have sat out in 2021 coming back from a pretty devastating ankle injury that occurred in the 2020 finale at TCU. However, it’s just a little odd.
While Baylor may be trying to keep its scholarship numbers in line by holding back and not putting Anthony on scholarship, I’m not a fan of having two scholarship QBs going into a season where so much is expected.
This is a team that has a real chance to compete for the Big 12 title again and possibly get into a playoff position. An injury to Shapen that could last for a while would be catastrophic.
I get it that Baylor is like so many programs across the game where after the starter, it’s a mystery who could step in and play well and try and keep a season together.
Drones needs a lot of work. But he got more work this past spring than he did in 2021. Anthony hasn’t taken a competitive snap in more than a year, so you have no idea what he’s really like from a mobility standpoint until you actually see him. For all he has shown and how he emerged as the starter, you hope injuries don’t beset Shapen’s career.
This is a tightrope that Baylor is walking with this position. Like Stephen Cook and I have talked, if this was 2012 when Bryce Petty had to wait, Petty would not have waited in 2022. He would have been gone.
I’ll concede that managing the QB position is really challenging for college coaches because of how transient it is. It’s probably the toughest it ever has been in the history of this sport. Guys don’t start. They leave.
But you also need credible depth. And I don’t know if Baylor has that. Now, we ran into this in 2021 when Bohanon won the job over Jacob Zeno and turned in the season of a lifetime.
However, the season started with four scholarship QBs, Bohanon, Zeno, Shapen and Drones. We finished with three when Zeno left.
In 2022, we’re looking at two. Again, not having a QB in the 2022 signing class impacts this. All you can do is hope that this plan works out and Shapen stays upright.
The future of a program is riding on it.
*****
The quick Baylor other sports notes is that the NCAA track and field competition is Wednesday-Saturday in Eugene, OR.
Baylor is sending two relay teams and eight individuals. You can read about it in this link.
*****
Finally, on this 78th anniversary of D-Day when allied troops launched their assault on the beaches of France, I am reminded of the extraordinary speech then-President Ronald Reagan gave at that very site on what was then the 40th anniversary in 1984.
We're here to mark that day in history when the Allied armies joined in battle to reclaim this continent to liberty. For 4 long years, much of Europe had been under a terrible shadow. Free nations had fallen, Jews cried out in the camps, millions cried out for liberation. Europe was enslaved, and the world prayed for its rescue. Here in Normandy the rescue began. Here the Allies stood and fought against tyranny in a giant undertaking unparalleled in human history.
We stand on a lonely, windswept point on the northern shore of France. The air is soft, but 40 years ago at this moment, the air was dense with smoke and the cries of men, and the air was filled with the crack of rifle fire and the roar of cannon. At dawn, on the morning of the 6th of June, 1944, 225 Rangers jumped off the British landing craft and ran to the bottom of these cliffs. Their mission was one of the most difficult and daring of the invasion: to climb these sheer and desolate cliffs and take out the enemy guns. The Allies had been told that some of the mightiest of these guns were here and they would be trained on the beaches to stop the Allied advance.
The Rangers looked up and saw the enemy soldiers -- the edge of the cliffs shooting down at them with machineguns and throwing grenades. And the American Rangers began to climb. They shot rope ladders over the face of these cliffs and began to pull themselves up. When one Ranger fell, another would take his place. When one rope was cut, a Ranger would grab another and begin his climb again. They climbed, shot back, and held their footing. Soon, one by one, the Rangers pulled themselves over the top, and in seizing the firm land at the top of these cliffs, they began to seize back the continent of Europe. Two hundred and twenty-five came here. After 2 days of fighting, only 90 could still bear arms.
Behind me is a memorial that symbolizes the Ranger daggers that were thrust into the top of these cliffs. And before me are the men who put them there.
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.
Gentlemen, I look at you and I think of the words of Stephen Spender's poem. You are men who in your ``lives fought for life . . . and left the vivid air signed with your honor.''
I think I know what you may be thinking right now -- thinking ``we were just part of a bigger effort; everyone was brave that day.'' Well, everyone was. Do you remember the story of Bill Millin of the 51st Highlanders? Forty years ago today, British troops were pinned down near a bridge, waiting desperately for help. Suddenly, they heard the sound of bagpipes, and some thought they were dreaming. Well, they weren't. They looked up and saw Bill Millin with his bagpipes, leading the reinforcements and ignoring the smack of the bullets into the ground around him.
Lord Lovat was with him -- Lord Lovat of Scotland, who calmly announced when he got to the bridge, ``Sorry I'm a few minutes late,'' as if he'd been delayed by a traffic jam, when in truth he'd just come from the bloody fighting on Sword Beach, which he and his men had just taken.
There was the impossible valor of the Poles who threw themselves between the enemy and the rest of Europe as the invasion took hold, and the unsurpassed courage of the Canadians who had already seen the horrors of war on this coast. They knew what awaited them there, but they would not be deterred. And once they hit Juno Beach, they never looked back.
All of these men were part of a rollcall of honor with names that spoke of a pride as bright as the colors they bore: the Royal Winnipeg Rifles, Poland's 24th Lancers, the Royal Scots Fusiliers, the Screaming Eagles, the Yeomen of England's armored divisions, the forces of Free France, the Coast Guard's ``Matchbox Fleet'' and you, the American Rangers.
Forty summers have passed since the battle that you fought here. You were young the day you took these cliffs; some of you were hardly more than boys, with the deepest joys of life before you. Yet, you risked everything here. Why? Why did you do it? What impelled you to put aside the instinct for self-preservation and risk your lives to take these cliffs? What inspired all the men of the armies that met here? We look at you, and somehow we know the answer. It was faith and belief; it was loyalty and love.
The men of Normandy had faith that what they were doing was right, faith that they fought for all humanity, faith that a just God would grant them mercy on this beachhead or on the next. It was the deep knowledge -- and pray God we have not lost it -- that there is a profound, moral difference between the use of force for liberation and the use of force for conquest. You were here to liberate, not to conquer, and so you and those others did not doubt your cause. And you were right not to doubt.
You all knew that some things are worth dying for. One's country is worth dying for, and democracy is worth dying for, because it's the most deeply honorable form of government ever devised by man. All of you loved liberty. All of you were willing to fight tyranny, and you knew the people of your countries were behind you.
The Americans who fought here that morning knew word of the invasion was spreading through the darkness back home. They fought -- or felt in their hearts, though they couldn't know in fact, that in Georgia they were filling the churches at 4 a.m., in Kansas they were kneeling on their porches and praying, and in Philadelphia they were ringing the Liberty Bell.
Something else helped the men of D-day: their rockhard belief that Providence would have a great hand in the events that would unfold here; that God was an ally in this great cause. And so, the night before the invasion, when Colonel Wolverton asked his parachute troops to kneel with him in prayer he told them: Do not bow your heads, but look up so you can see God and ask His blessing in what we're about to do. Also that night, General Matthew Ridgway on his cot, listening in the darkness for the promise God made to Joshua: ``I will not fail thee nor forsake thee.''
These are the things that impelled them; these are the things that shaped the unity of the Allies.
When the war was over, there were lives to be rebuilt and governments to be returned to the people. There were nations to be reborn. Above all, there was a new peace to be assured. These were huge and daunting tasks. But the Allies summoned strength from the faith, belief, loyalty, and love of those who fell here. They rebuilt a new Europe together.
There was first a great reconciliation among those who had been enemies, all of whom had suffered so greatly. The United States did its part, creating the Marshall plan to help rebuild our allies and our former enemies. The Marshall plan led to the Atlantic alliance -- a great alliance that serves to this day as our shield for freedom, for prosperity, and for peace.
In spite of our great efforts and successes, not all that followed the end of the war was happy or planned. Some liberated countries were lost. The great sadness of this loss echoes down to our own time in the streets of Warsaw, Prague, and East Berlin. Soviet troops that came to the center of this continent did not leave when peace came. They're still there, uninvited, unwanted, unyielding, almost 40 years after the war. Because of this, allied forces still stand on this continent. Today, as 40 years ago, our armies are here for only one purpose -- to protect and defend democracy. The only territories we hold are memorials like this one and graveyards where our heroes rest.
We in America have learned bitter lessons from two World Wars: It is better to be here ready to protect the peace, than to take blind shelter across the sea, rushing to respond only after freedom is lost. We've learned that isolationism never was and never will be an acceptable response to tyrannical governments with an expansionist intent.
But we try always to be prepared for peace; prepared to deter aggression; prepared to negotiate the reduction of arms; and, yes, prepared to reach out again in the spirit of reconciliation. In truth, there is no reconciliation we would welcome more than a reconciliation with the Soviet Union, so, together, we can lessen the risks of war, now and forever.
It's fitting to remember here the great losses also suffered by the Russian people during World War II: 20 million perished, a terrible price that testifies to all the world the necessity of ending war. I tell you from my heart that we in the United States do not want war. We want to wipe from the face of the Earth the terrible weapons that man now has in his hands. And I tell you, we are ready to seize that beachhead. We look for some sign from the Soviet Union that they are willing to move forward, that they share our desire and love for peace, and that they will give up the ways of conquest. There must be a changing there that will allow us to turn our hope into action.
We will pray forever that some day that changing will come. But for now, particularly today, it is good and fitting to renew our commitment to each other, to our freedom, and to the alliance that protects it.
We are bound today by what bound us 40 years ago, the same loyalties, traditions, and beliefs. We're bound by reality. The strength of America's allies is vital to the United States, and the American security guarantee is essential to the continued freedom of Europe's democracies. We were with you then; we are with you now. Your hopes are our hopes, and your destiny is our destiny.
Here, in this place where the West held together, let us make a vow to our dead. Let us show them by our actions that we understand what they died for. Let our actions say to them the words for which Matthew Ridgway listened: ``I will not fail thee nor forsake thee.''
Strengthened by their courage, heartened by their value [valor], and borne by their memory, let us continue to stand for the ideals for which they lived and died.
Let's make it a great week!
Publisher
Greetings from Pittsburgh. The RJB has returned to the steel city for a couple of days. The weather is far more tolerable as we are in the 80s.
But keeping with the theme of picking something from the trend the RJB goes back to history to the year of 1979. That was the year the Pittsburgh Pirates won the World Series, beating the Baltimore Orioles four games to three.
A team led by the late Hall of Fame great Willie Stargell. Pittsburgh rallied from a 3-1 deficit to win it all.
As such, the RJB is staying across the street from Pittsburgh’s newest field, PNC Park. The RJB has been here a couple of times. It’s a beautiful stadium, although these Pirates aren’t that great. Well, they’re not awful either.
But getting back to 1979, that takes us to this week’s selection where the Pirates theme song was Disco song from Sister Sledge. They have probably made so much off or royalties in the last 43 years that they should be swimming in cash.
Indeed, if you’ve been to a wedding and this song has been played, then you know what the RJB is talking about. If it hasn’t been played, then the DJ or the band should have been fired on the spot.
For the record it was the No. 1 song in the R&B charts in 1979 and No. 2 in the pop charts behind Donna Summer’s Hot Stuff.
*****
Obviously, as you have read above, your publisher is out of Texas through the first half of Wednesday for company meetings. These are going to be pretty much all-day affairs.
I will be out of pocket for the most part but will try and get stories of recruits or what have you relating to Baylor posted as early as I can on successive days. Just the way it works sometimes. Tuesday night into Wednesday will be a little tricky. A 4:00 am wakeup call to fly back.
When there are some breaks, I will check in to answer any questions. If I see an offer or something of note I will post when I can. If you see something, you can post it when you see fit.
*****
With the first weekend of the NCAA baseball tournament winding down, my belief is that things should pick up toward the hiring of a new baseball coach. I’ll leave the Blitz up through Monday in case you didn’t see the hot list.
My reaction to those names is what you would expect for a job that is in a P5 conference. There are some solid G5 names, a couple of P5 names between head coaches and assistants.
What’s going to be key for the new head coach is making sure he has the resources to compete at the next level and try and get Baylor baseball back to an era where it used to enjoy consistent Top 25 rankings and NCAA tournament appearances.
Steve Rodriguez didn’t keep his job because he only made the tournament in three of his seven seasons. I know I know COVID in 2020 wiped out the season but it counts.
Baylor baseball’s reputation has suffered pretty much since it lost to Arkansas in the 2012 Super Regionals. Since 2013, Baylor has been to the NCAA tournament just three times, 2017, 2018 and 2019.
Facility upgrades likely will have to be addressed at some point. Baylor Ballpark is a great park. But it and its surrounding amenities need a facelift.
Baylor AD Mack Rhoades has set a high level for all of his major programs. Football won a conference title. Men’s basketball shared a regular season conference title. Women’s basketball won a regular season conference title.
And while softball struggled, it still managed to make the postseason and win that championship. Baseball needs to do better.
BTW, there were some rumors about Baylor having an assistant athletic director in the dugout toward the end of the 2022 season to monitor Rodriguez. Accurate or not, I don’t think it matters.
What matters is the Ws and Ls. Baylor just wasn’t securing enough of those in the left-hand column. Personally, I don’t think you need an administrator in the dugout to tell you what you can see clearly on the field.
*****
I’m going to take this space to ask that everybody take a breath when it come to the hype and promotion of walk-on quarterbacks.
Over the last couple of years, we seem to have become carried away by this phenomenon. I don’t know why.
Through no fault of his own, it started with CJ Rogers who turned down some FCS offers and walked on with Baylor to see if he could ever get an opportunity. Well, as in the case of many walk ons who come through a football program, they never see the field. Or if they do, it’s in such an obscure capacity it won’t impact a game or a season.
The situation with Rogers escalated during the spring and then took off after the spring game.
To an outsider it made sense, scholarship QB Gerry Bohanon just lost the starting job to Blake Shapen and within 24 hours was in the NCAA transfer portal. That meant Baylor was down to two scholarship QBs between Shapen and Kyron Drones. That’s a little hmmmm.
But because Drones looked pretty raw in the spring game and Rogers excited everybody with his performance including the deep touchdown pass, more than one thought he should surpass Drones as the backup. Maybe he should have been considered for a scholarship.
Speculation ran amok. Well, that never happened. Rogers decided he was done waiting and left. Now, Baylor’s third quarterback is another walk-on in grad transfer and former scholarship quarterback Luke Anthony. Anthony spent his time between Abilene Christian and Louisiana Tech.
I think the social media promotion of Anthony’s arrival probably needed to be toned down a bit. Yes, he has a history in the college game. He had some success. It’s perfect for Baylor because it has the type of QB I thought it needed shortly after Bohanon left. There are some miles on the tire. Anthony is at Baylor for one year. He’s not a threat to either of the scholarship QBs. He’s an insurance policy.
Personally, with all of that going for him, I think Baylor should have put him on scholarship because it’s not like his spot on the roster was going to cause any future concerns. If anything, his history should validate he earned one.
I really could care less if Anthony’s mother is the Elon Musk of home health care. He may have sat out in 2021 coming back from a pretty devastating ankle injury that occurred in the 2020 finale at TCU. However, it’s just a little odd.
While Baylor may be trying to keep its scholarship numbers in line by holding back and not putting Anthony on scholarship, I’m not a fan of having two scholarship QBs going into a season where so much is expected.
This is a team that has a real chance to compete for the Big 12 title again and possibly get into a playoff position. An injury to Shapen that could last for a while would be catastrophic.
I get it that Baylor is like so many programs across the game where after the starter, it’s a mystery who could step in and play well and try and keep a season together.
Drones needs a lot of work. But he got more work this past spring than he did in 2021. Anthony hasn’t taken a competitive snap in more than a year, so you have no idea what he’s really like from a mobility standpoint until you actually see him. For all he has shown and how he emerged as the starter, you hope injuries don’t beset Shapen’s career.
This is a tightrope that Baylor is walking with this position. Like Stephen Cook and I have talked, if this was 2012 when Bryce Petty had to wait, Petty would not have waited in 2022. He would have been gone.
I’ll concede that managing the QB position is really challenging for college coaches because of how transient it is. It’s probably the toughest it ever has been in the history of this sport. Guys don’t start. They leave.
But you also need credible depth. And I don’t know if Baylor has that. Now, we ran into this in 2021 when Bohanon won the job over Jacob Zeno and turned in the season of a lifetime.
However, the season started with four scholarship QBs, Bohanon, Zeno, Shapen and Drones. We finished with three when Zeno left.
In 2022, we’re looking at two. Again, not having a QB in the 2022 signing class impacts this. All you can do is hope that this plan works out and Shapen stays upright.
The future of a program is riding on it.
*****
The quick Baylor other sports notes is that the NCAA track and field competition is Wednesday-Saturday in Eugene, OR.
Baylor is sending two relay teams and eight individuals. You can read about it in this link.
*****
Finally, on this 78th anniversary of D-Day when allied troops launched their assault on the beaches of France, I am reminded of the extraordinary speech then-President Ronald Reagan gave at that very site on what was then the 40th anniversary in 1984.
We're here to mark that day in history when the Allied armies joined in battle to reclaim this continent to liberty. For 4 long years, much of Europe had been under a terrible shadow. Free nations had fallen, Jews cried out in the camps, millions cried out for liberation. Europe was enslaved, and the world prayed for its rescue. Here in Normandy the rescue began. Here the Allies stood and fought against tyranny in a giant undertaking unparalleled in human history.
We stand on a lonely, windswept point on the northern shore of France. The air is soft, but 40 years ago at this moment, the air was dense with smoke and the cries of men, and the air was filled with the crack of rifle fire and the roar of cannon. At dawn, on the morning of the 6th of June, 1944, 225 Rangers jumped off the British landing craft and ran to the bottom of these cliffs. Their mission was one of the most difficult and daring of the invasion: to climb these sheer and desolate cliffs and take out the enemy guns. The Allies had been told that some of the mightiest of these guns were here and they would be trained on the beaches to stop the Allied advance.
The Rangers looked up and saw the enemy soldiers -- the edge of the cliffs shooting down at them with machineguns and throwing grenades. And the American Rangers began to climb. They shot rope ladders over the face of these cliffs and began to pull themselves up. When one Ranger fell, another would take his place. When one rope was cut, a Ranger would grab another and begin his climb again. They climbed, shot back, and held their footing. Soon, one by one, the Rangers pulled themselves over the top, and in seizing the firm land at the top of these cliffs, they began to seize back the continent of Europe. Two hundred and twenty-five came here. After 2 days of fighting, only 90 could still bear arms.
Behind me is a memorial that symbolizes the Ranger daggers that were thrust into the top of these cliffs. And before me are the men who put them there.
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.
Gentlemen, I look at you and I think of the words of Stephen Spender's poem. You are men who in your ``lives fought for life . . . and left the vivid air signed with your honor.''
I think I know what you may be thinking right now -- thinking ``we were just part of a bigger effort; everyone was brave that day.'' Well, everyone was. Do you remember the story of Bill Millin of the 51st Highlanders? Forty years ago today, British troops were pinned down near a bridge, waiting desperately for help. Suddenly, they heard the sound of bagpipes, and some thought they were dreaming. Well, they weren't. They looked up and saw Bill Millin with his bagpipes, leading the reinforcements and ignoring the smack of the bullets into the ground around him.
Lord Lovat was with him -- Lord Lovat of Scotland, who calmly announced when he got to the bridge, ``Sorry I'm a few minutes late,'' as if he'd been delayed by a traffic jam, when in truth he'd just come from the bloody fighting on Sword Beach, which he and his men had just taken.
There was the impossible valor of the Poles who threw themselves between the enemy and the rest of Europe as the invasion took hold, and the unsurpassed courage of the Canadians who had already seen the horrors of war on this coast. They knew what awaited them there, but they would not be deterred. And once they hit Juno Beach, they never looked back.
All of these men were part of a rollcall of honor with names that spoke of a pride as bright as the colors they bore: the Royal Winnipeg Rifles, Poland's 24th Lancers, the Royal Scots Fusiliers, the Screaming Eagles, the Yeomen of England's armored divisions, the forces of Free France, the Coast Guard's ``Matchbox Fleet'' and you, the American Rangers.
Forty summers have passed since the battle that you fought here. You were young the day you took these cliffs; some of you were hardly more than boys, with the deepest joys of life before you. Yet, you risked everything here. Why? Why did you do it? What impelled you to put aside the instinct for self-preservation and risk your lives to take these cliffs? What inspired all the men of the armies that met here? We look at you, and somehow we know the answer. It was faith and belief; it was loyalty and love.
The men of Normandy had faith that what they were doing was right, faith that they fought for all humanity, faith that a just God would grant them mercy on this beachhead or on the next. It was the deep knowledge -- and pray God we have not lost it -- that there is a profound, moral difference between the use of force for liberation and the use of force for conquest. You were here to liberate, not to conquer, and so you and those others did not doubt your cause. And you were right not to doubt.
You all knew that some things are worth dying for. One's country is worth dying for, and democracy is worth dying for, because it's the most deeply honorable form of government ever devised by man. All of you loved liberty. All of you were willing to fight tyranny, and you knew the people of your countries were behind you.
The Americans who fought here that morning knew word of the invasion was spreading through the darkness back home. They fought -- or felt in their hearts, though they couldn't know in fact, that in Georgia they were filling the churches at 4 a.m., in Kansas they were kneeling on their porches and praying, and in Philadelphia they were ringing the Liberty Bell.
Something else helped the men of D-day: their rockhard belief that Providence would have a great hand in the events that would unfold here; that God was an ally in this great cause. And so, the night before the invasion, when Colonel Wolverton asked his parachute troops to kneel with him in prayer he told them: Do not bow your heads, but look up so you can see God and ask His blessing in what we're about to do. Also that night, General Matthew Ridgway on his cot, listening in the darkness for the promise God made to Joshua: ``I will not fail thee nor forsake thee.''
These are the things that impelled them; these are the things that shaped the unity of the Allies.
When the war was over, there were lives to be rebuilt and governments to be returned to the people. There were nations to be reborn. Above all, there was a new peace to be assured. These were huge and daunting tasks. But the Allies summoned strength from the faith, belief, loyalty, and love of those who fell here. They rebuilt a new Europe together.
There was first a great reconciliation among those who had been enemies, all of whom had suffered so greatly. The United States did its part, creating the Marshall plan to help rebuild our allies and our former enemies. The Marshall plan led to the Atlantic alliance -- a great alliance that serves to this day as our shield for freedom, for prosperity, and for peace.
In spite of our great efforts and successes, not all that followed the end of the war was happy or planned. Some liberated countries were lost. The great sadness of this loss echoes down to our own time in the streets of Warsaw, Prague, and East Berlin. Soviet troops that came to the center of this continent did not leave when peace came. They're still there, uninvited, unwanted, unyielding, almost 40 years after the war. Because of this, allied forces still stand on this continent. Today, as 40 years ago, our armies are here for only one purpose -- to protect and defend democracy. The only territories we hold are memorials like this one and graveyards where our heroes rest.
We in America have learned bitter lessons from two World Wars: It is better to be here ready to protect the peace, than to take blind shelter across the sea, rushing to respond only after freedom is lost. We've learned that isolationism never was and never will be an acceptable response to tyrannical governments with an expansionist intent.
But we try always to be prepared for peace; prepared to deter aggression; prepared to negotiate the reduction of arms; and, yes, prepared to reach out again in the spirit of reconciliation. In truth, there is no reconciliation we would welcome more than a reconciliation with the Soviet Union, so, together, we can lessen the risks of war, now and forever.
It's fitting to remember here the great losses also suffered by the Russian people during World War II: 20 million perished, a terrible price that testifies to all the world the necessity of ending war. I tell you from my heart that we in the United States do not want war. We want to wipe from the face of the Earth the terrible weapons that man now has in his hands. And I tell you, we are ready to seize that beachhead. We look for some sign from the Soviet Union that they are willing to move forward, that they share our desire and love for peace, and that they will give up the ways of conquest. There must be a changing there that will allow us to turn our hope into action.
We will pray forever that some day that changing will come. But for now, particularly today, it is good and fitting to renew our commitment to each other, to our freedom, and to the alliance that protects it.
We are bound today by what bound us 40 years ago, the same loyalties, traditions, and beliefs. We're bound by reality. The strength of America's allies is vital to the United States, and the American security guarantee is essential to the continued freedom of Europe's democracies. We were with you then; we are with you now. Your hopes are our hopes, and your destiny is our destiny.
Here, in this place where the West held together, let us make a vow to our dead. Let us show them by our actions that we understand what they died for. Let our actions say to them the words for which Matthew Ridgway listened: ``I will not fail thee nor forsake thee.''
Strengthened by their courage, heartened by their value [valor], and borne by their memory, let us continue to stand for the ideals for which they lived and died.
Let's make it a great week!
