Address by Paul Martin
Prime Minister of Canada
60th Anniversary of the Normandy Landings – Official Speeches
Speech delivered on Sunday, 6 June 2004 at the Juno Beach Centre in Courseulles-sur-Mer as part of the Franco-Canadian ceremony.
“Ladies and gentlemen,
“Keep moving forward,” they were told. That morning, against snipers, against mortars, against the powerful artillery embedded in the German fortifications, it was the only way for a soldier to accomplish his mission. It was his best chance of survival. Keep moving forward.
On a stormy sea, the doors of the landing craft opened, as they opened all along the coast of France, as they had opened two years earlier at Dieppe, where so many Canadians had died defending the cause of freedom. On the English Channel that D-Day, some spoke of revenge for those sad events. Others remained silent as the coastline stretched further and further, as the hour of battle approached. Sixty years ago today, the doors opened, and they charged forward.
They had prepared for it. They had waited. Then thousands of Canadian soldiers advanced here against a well-entrenched enemy.
Men were falling around them. A friend, a brother, someone with whom they had just exchanged a joke, a glass of rum, or a bowl of soup. Men were falling, and yet they stormed the beach. Men were falling, and yet they stormed the fortifications. They moved inland. They fought in the streets. They liberated the towns. At nightfall, they were still advancing.
The waters of the English Channel and the winds off the Normandy coast have erased the traces left by those men at Juno Beach. But the great tide of time cannot wash away the profound impressions they left on our national memory, and on the annals of the free world.
When these soldiers, these men of unfailing nerve, have left us, their children and grandchildren will continue to come here. Prime ministers will come. So will artists and historians. Those whose grandfather, great-grandfather, or great-great-grandfather landed here on June 6, 1944. Those who know only what they’ve learned about war from books. They will come. Canadians will come.
We will come to these desolate and beautiful places to gaze at the beach, to reflect, to marvel, to feel tears well up and our hearts beat, to silently say thank you. We will always return to this historic place marked by sadness and triumph, where tyranny was repelled and freedom reclaimed.
Like the men who invaded this beach, we continue to move forward. As men and women. As a nation. As an international community.
It is thanks to your courage, it is thanks to the sacrifice made by those who died there, that we have this opportunity, and we will seize it. We will always strive to move forward.
But we will also stop. We will stop, just long enough to think of you. Just long enough to think of those who breathed their last here. We will think of you, and we will always be grateful.”
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