I may say, of the extent to which that history is being taught in our schools and colleges. Particularly in our schools. The ignorance of the history of our country and particularly of its military history is being widely ignored and thats got to be fixed. And one of the best people to fix it, of course, is our speaker this morning, alex kershaw. We feel in this 75th year of the anniversary of dday, particularly close to what we call the greatest generation, on memorial day we honored americans who had paid the supreme sacrifice in all of our wars. But weve always felt a particular closeness to what we call the greatest generation many of whom are slowly passing from the scene. Steven ambrose, biographer said the quality of character that we impute to them is one which has grown increasingly rare in our culture. Namely, modesty. More than one of these gentlemen is said to me that when people thank him for his service, he is embarrassed. He thanks them for their thanks. But what else would i be doing . And thats, i think, a wonderful tribute and test end. Alex kershaw is one of the titans of the profession. People who have made their lifes work of the study of that war. And particularly of what to us is the most famous portion of the war in europe. He is a graduate of University College oxford. Probably its most prominent and famous graduate since the po et, shelly. How about that . It is also one of the few colleges at oxford that had a distinguished american president. Can you remember who it was . Kingman brewster. Thats right. He recognized the promotion from yale to university, and it did well by it. Alex needs, as they say, no introduction. Most of you have probably read at least one of his books, but we are very grateful that he has joined us this morning, and without further adieu, may i introduce and present to you alex kershaw. Good morning. Can you hear me okay . Actually, thats way too flattering of you, sir. Way too flattering. I did actually have a room not far from the shelly memorial, but i wont tell you what we did on top of the shelly memorial. Ive been on a book tour for quite a while. I wanted to say that im 53 years old. Ive been in this country 25 years. My wife is american. My son is american, and sir, thank you. I have spent 53 years of my life growing up in a peaceful and democratic europe because of what you did in world war ii. Thank you for being here today. And i should say that there are several institutions in this wonderful country that Whose Mission statement is to honor the sacrifice and to remember the courage of the socalled greatest generation, and the friends of the World War Ii National world war ii memorial actually do that. Their memorial, National World war ii memorial, actually do that. Their mission is pure and its successful, and i cant thank you enough, sir, for inviting me here today. You do a wonderful, wonderful job. Before i move on, i wanted to remind you guys that at 5 00 this morning Dwight Eisenhower did this. I have to i have to get rid of my props, but he was in the room at suffolk house with seven of the overlord commanders, 53 years old. 60 filterless cigarettes a day, a constant ringing in his right armright ear, sorry and a palsy in his right hand from signing so many orders and documents, and at 5 00 this morning he walked with hands clasped behind his back like this, his chin on his chest, blueeyed, very handsome, looking very stressful, and some people said that he walked up and down for five minutes, and i i said to Walter Cronkite long after the way. No way did i walk up and down for five minutes. That would have been seemed like had a lifetime, but he was walking up and down deciding whether he should give the final order to go. Thats today 75 years ago, and finally he looked over around 4 30 in the morning, and he looked up and said quietly lets go. So today is an historic day. Im going to take you through very quickly some of the highlights of dday. Im going to focus mainly on yanks, of course, but my heart will beat a little faster when we come to some characters. The point of the book and my story is to highlight the guys who got the job done, who had they not succeeded, dday may have failed, so these are the people, young combat commanders, most of them never in combat before, never been fired at in ander before, who were given the critical jobs on dday. They had the longest odds of survival, the Toughest Missions and the highest stakes. Im going to start off with this really beautiful colorized photograph. This is easy red sector of omaha beach. Second deadliest sector on omaha. 900 of you killed in around about three hours on omaha beach. This is Robert Cappers famous photographs. One of the famous photographs that shows you the 16th infantry regiment landing on omaha. Thats move past, that so i i dont want any overt selfadvertisements. What i did was try to show tried to get the sweep of the invasion but take a character from each of the beaches and each of the major operations as a 50mile front, and i wanted one guy to symbolize, to personify that force. Around about, what still is it now . Its about 10 00, so 75 years ago around about now, give or take an hour or so, this gentleman here, Lieutenant Colonel joel crouch, was finally received his orders to go. Now these guys are incredible. These are the crew of the very first plane to drop americans into normandy on dday. Crouch was the lead pilot, numero uno, head honcho in four amphibious invasions in europe, sisically, salerno, dday, bastoin and finally a fifth day across the rhine in march of 1949. By far the most respected and most capable c47 pilot of world war ii. Youll notice the colors, the overlord colors on the c47 coated behind them had just been coated over there. Now excuse my language, am i al howard to use can i use the word badass in this company . Yes. These guys are the definition of badass, because they are the First Americans to try and defeat nazis on dday. The first 18 guys to jump out of joel crouchs plane are these guys. Plane one dropped at 12 15 a. M. On dday. The first 18 americans. They were pathfinders. Their job was to set up radars and bright lights to guide in that gorgeous long, long sky train of c47s of six and a half,000 screaming egles that will arrive later. Their job is to guide the way to set up the drop zones, and this is their commander frank villaman, 21 years old. He jumped at 12 15 a. M. From the c47 and jumped from around 500 feet. We think it took 20 to 25 seconds. He landed and when his parachutes boots hit the dewsoaked grass of normandy, he officially became in 1944 the very First American to see combat to land in normandy on dday. Had made 43 jumps, practice jumps, before dday, and on one of them every single man actually had a stogie in his mouth, and this is a true story. And on one practice jump one of his guys looked at him and he didnt have a stogie in his mouth. He was about to jump out and they were oh, my god. Quickly grabbed a stogie, stuck it in his mouth and everyone said okay. 43 times with a stoegy in his mouth and believe it or not, and when rolled over into that dewsoaked grass on dday he still had a stogie in his mouth. Badly wounded on the evening of 6th of june, went back to england, went awol from hospital, was demoted, put into a different unit of the 502nd por and saw combat all the way through to the end of the war. Highly decorated. Came home a great hero. First american on dday. This is where my heart starts to beat very fast because this is the brits at pegasus bridge. Here the first glider is around 30, 40 yards from its objective set free around midnight at 6,000 feet. The pilot has a compass and a stop watch and lands 30 yards from the objective. Want to point out one thing here. These are wheels on the wood and can it was glider, a wood and canvas glider. They are cosmetic. They are not used. That glider landed at 90 miles per hour, and this is what they used. They used this skid underneath. So can you imagine grips and crash lands at 90 miles per hour. The most Successful Operation of dday was the first Successful Operation. The bridge, two bridges, pegasus here and one over here were taken in ten minutes, landed at 12 15, 12 25 and the first successive message of dday goes out, ham and jam, ham for one bridge and jam for the other. And this is something that us brits are immensely, immensely proud of. The question is did you guys land first, or did we . When i say we im kind of im half american, sorry. I wont apologize for that. In fact, it was, unfortunately, it was us. It was us brits, and this is a guy from the sas norm an poole, and he landed officially at 12 12 a. M. , and he was part of a decoy unit, so when he jumped out of a plan he had a grammaphone in his arms and he landed successfully, started to play the grammaphone and the grammaphone played the sounds of war, and with him when he jumped were hundreds and hundreds of ruperts. Does anybody know what rupert is . Its not rupert the bear, its a mock paratrooper about 3 foot high so they dropped thousands of these in normandy, and hits operation was as success. The germans thought that the sound of war from the grammaphone was actually a british regiment and that all of these dummy parachuteists were actually real, so anyway, hes number one. This is lieutenant sorry, captain leonard schroeder, utah beach here, officially recognized, again, in the press in 1944 as the First American to wade ashore. Think about that, the first guy out of almost 30,000 on utah beach to come ashore 6 28 a. M. Very good friends with thee door roosevelt jr. , at 56, the oldest general officer on dday. In fact, Theodore Roosevelt jr. Was in the very first wave with him. He was F Company Commander and roosevelt went in with e company and around about 150, 200 yards to schroeders right. Ive actually stood on the very beach where they came ashore, and schroeder said he looked over to his right and saw this guy, the famous son of one of your great president s, huffing and puffing with a Walking Stick running across this beach, you know, shouting at guys, and so very this is the sea wall at utah over here on the right. Lovely photograph showing you what it was like about three or four miles from the beach. 300 or 400 yards from the beach this officer here would not be taking a good glance at the beach. Hed have his head well down because they would be under extreme fire, but this shows you ordinary working class americans who remember formed a miracle. They are about to perform a miracle. They are landing in a very, very deadly part of omaha beach. One of the characters in my book, one of the guys i became very attached to. He looks my son there. This is lieutenant john spaldy taken in his early 20s. This is the famous praf from the National Archives called the jaws of democrat up here youll see the bluffs here, and that where my finger is pointing is where the american graveyard is a col desurmer uncertain powerful and perhaps the best slot of what it was like to end early on june 6th on omaha beach. Again, a wonderful representation of the first wave on omaha. Look how rough the water is. This is no cakewalk indeed, and some of these guys had been in a boat for four hours. Schroeder, the guy i showed you, said that four out of five guys in his Landing Craft were seasick. Most of them couldnt wait to get their feet on the beach. They didnt care whether they were going to get killed or not. Just get me off that god damn Landing Craft. Again, a beautiful, beautiful, an important Robert Capper shot. There you go. The bluffs are there. And youll notice if you have really good eyesight that this is the first wave. These are soldiers down here on a shingle rise. Thats the first place that you stood a chance of living on omaha beach in the first wave. Penned down just below the bullets but they cant get off that beach. Very very dramatic, very intense shot of what it was like to arrive. Imagine five and a half miles of that along omaha beach, and then youve got gis clustered around romes bear kids here. Bad thing to do, if you clustered too long for five, ten minutes as a group. Youd be killed. Youd be shot. The thing that you had to do on omaha was stand up and run as fast as you could into the like of fire. That was the way that you would live. Really, again, beautiful intense shot here. We move on. This is actually for quite a while people claimed to be that guy in that photograph. There were several people who have claimed to be this man. We finally, most people agree, that there is actually private huston riley, f company, 16th regiment and he signed the photograph. That was his third time in the first wave so when he land on omaha beach, that was the third time he had come out of a Landing Craft in the first wave. North africa, sicily and then omaha. Moving on her, lieutenant George Kirchner on the right, became d Company Commander on point of hawk. This photograph was taken after the war. On dday they didnt stand around how best to get up the cliffs, and over here, again, these two guys, never been in combat before, 225 guys, 60 casualties, 75 killed in the two days after dday. Kirchner here, he was promoted. In fact, at the bottom of the cliffs he spotted rudder, the famous rid and shouted out to him and said ive assumed command of d company and rudder shot back says i couldnt care a monkey and get your god damn butt up the cliffs and he said it was easier going up the cliffs than it was in training. He had been trained by the british, the British Commando and we trained them properly. Believe it or not, the is 20foot cliff was tee or three times lower than some of the cliffs that they climbed in england. This is rudder and kirchner after dday. Both received the distinguished service cross. Rid at a ceremony and he held up his dsc in front of the few men that were alive and he cried and said this is for you, and the guys shot back, no, you keep it for us. I wont go on too long about it because ill get very emotional. About three weeks ago i was in normandy, and i was with a guy and the guide said to me, alex, over in that field there, thats where the ceremony was held, and i found an account written by a ranger who said this is not far from where that photograph was taken. Its a Beautiful Day and the sun came out and the sun reflected off the stars on the officers uniforms. The officers had been lined up one side of the lane and on the other side of the lane. He said ill never forget the light catch the glint on the dead officers stars. Back to spaulding. Im going to speed up. If youve been to the american graveyard from the lookout point, when you look down, youll notice some of you that theres a beautiful winding path that goes down to omaha beach. Thats named spaulding beach for good reason after this guy. Look how young he is. He has distinction of being the First American overs and its an important distinction and crucial distinction. The First American officer never in combat before, nervous at hell the night before. Bad dreams, sleepless nights for months. First guy to lead others off omaha beat. Now, we needed him toll do it and needed dozens of others to do it on omaha. Thats the story of omaha beach. These guys made the difference, not navy, not the bombers, not the generals, they failed. These guys saved the day so he arrived at the top of spald being path, walked through amileperhourfield and had an angel on each shoulder. The first guy to break out got to the top of cliffs around about 8 00 on june 6, 1944. Ill be selfindulgent now. He didnt go to my college, University College. Actually bill clinton went to my college, too. If you go into the dining hall at my college, i dont want to get too diverted here, but if you walk in, youll see the first thing you see is three british prime ministers obviously and then over here, way over in the corner hidden is kind of a not very good oil painting of bill clinton right here, and thats when he obviously didnt inhale when he was opposite i did, but thats another story. Anyway, but the reason i point here, this is a photograph taken, here he is. High larned chief, scottish noble and commander of two and a half pounds of the British Working class, 33 years old, a fellow oxford graduate, a poet and brutal warrior. He said to his men that dday was only third day he was in combat in world war ii. The two previous days had been so successful, the raids that he commanded, that he was a legend among his raids. This is dieppe in 1942, most of you know it was a bleed disaster. He heres his part of the dieppe raid was a fantastic success and went like clockwork. He said youre going to be the fine cutting edge of the british army on dday and he also said if one before you make a single mistake youll never go into combat again. He was utterly ruthless and very, very effective. Have any of you seen this photograph before . Im going move quickly. This is an absolutely astonishing photograph because here is lord lovett himself here. 20,000acre scottish estate. Hes actually leading his men on to sword beach. This is around about 8 30 in the morning on dday. You can see the tanks in the background, and those of you who have seen the move the longest day will recognize the piper here, the famous piper. The only guy out of 150 allied troops on dday that was allowed to play the bagpipes. In an interview after the war, boast them survived. Lovett was badly wounded. Half his stomach was blown away by a german shell but in relation to this photograph, he said i was watching loven. I wanted him to go first because i wanted him to test the water and see how deep it was. He was wading ashore there and hes actually playing the bagpipes here, here. The only guy with a bagpipe and the only guy wearing a kilt and as all true scottmen know, when you wear a kilt you dont wear anything underneath the kilt so milne said that he followed levet ashore and it was very cold water. It was shockingly cold, and we dont know what anyway. I wont go there. They were very small. Then he walked on to the beach. He wades on to the beach and levet turns to him and says play th