The dramatic story of Pointe du Hoc, the backdrop to Biden's D-Day anniversary speech
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... President Biden's itinerary for commemorating D-Day's 80th anniversary in France includes giving a speech on Friday at a Normandy site called Pointe du Hoc.
The 100-foot cliff juts out over the Omaha and Utah beaches, where thousands of U.S. troops landed on June 6, 1944, as Allied forces stormed the coast and, ultimately, turned the tide of World War II in their favor.
Pointe du Hoc didn't only overlook the historic landings and battles happening on shore. Its craggy edges were themselves the site of one of the invasion's most daring operations.
The occupying German forces had established a defensive position atop the cliff, stationing several long-range guns that posed a major threat to the Allied troops coming ashore.
A group of 225 U.S. Army Rangers " led by then-Lt. Col. James Earl Rudder " was tasked with destroying those guns. But they had to scale the cliff to get to them.
U.S. soldiers from the 2nd Ranger Battalion surround German prisoners on the Pointe du Hoc on D-Day.
US National Archives/AFP via Getty
The mission that ensued has been memorialized with a granite monument, depicted (though not entirely accurately) in the war epic The Longest Day and now honored in milestone anniversary speeches by two U.S. presidents, 40 years apart.
The site, located some 7 miles west of Normandy American Cemetery, has experienced erosion over time and even lost a chunk of its outcrop in a 2022 landslide. But its monument and bunkers remain ever-popular attractions for Normandy visitors.
Pointe du Hoc endures as a symbol of "tenacity, combat resilience, leadership, sacrifice [and] teamwork", in the words of Mike Bell, executive director of the Jenny Craig Institute for the Study of War and Democracy at the National WWII Museum.
"Here's what these citizen soldiers can achieve, and achieve it, in this case, to begin the liberation," he told NPR, "achieve it for the ends of ultimately freeing the oppressed peoples of Europe and trying to build a more safe and secure world." ...
Decades later, President Ronald Reagan commemorated the 40th anniversary of D-Day on-site with a rousing speech about the "boys of Pointe du Hoc."
Reagan had marked the anniversary at Omaha and Utah Beaches. But senior White House staff wanted him to speak at the cliff, too, former assistant to the president James Kuhn told NPR over email.
"The Pointe du Hoc Memorial itself with the English Channel in the background and the Normandy cliffs to the east and west provided the setting for Reagan to bring another strong focus to the Allied invasion on D-Day," he wrote.
Reagan delivered his address in front of 62 of the Rangers who had scaled the cliff that day, whom he referred to as "the men who took the cliffs ... the champions who helped free a continent ... the heroes who helped end a war." ...
