From the archives | 'These men saved the world': Veterans cry for dead and themselves

This story originally published on June 7, 1994. It is being republished as part of the commemoration of USA TODAY's 40th anniversary on Sept. 15, 2022.

COLLEVILLE-SUR-MER, France — The generation that saved the world from tyranny 50 years ago but rarely talked about it since, dominated the world stage again Monday. This time, too, few words were needed.

The long-awaited 50th anniversary of D-Day, a turning point for the 20th century and the men who lived it, arrived with all the pomp, pageantry and VIPs these Normandy beaches would allow. But it was not the public spectacle that signaled this last proud hurrah for the World War II generation. It was the sight of pent-up tears streaming down the cheeks of men raised not to cry.

"My commanding officer is buried out there and I want to have the guts to go and see him," said Peter Burland, 69, of Houston, here on his third trip back to Normandy. But, his voice breaking, "I cry a lot and don't think I could."

On this day, though, many found the strength to cry. These men who had waded into the withering fire of Hitler's Atlantic Wall, who had jumped toward darkness and death, who had scratched and cleaved to this shore against all reason and sanity; finally, it seemed, a generational shift had turned far enough for tears.

They cried for the men – the boys really – buried beneath crosses and stars. They cried for the men who survived the war but didn't make it to D-Day plus 50 years, who didn't see how grateful was the world. They cried for the French children and grandmothers who waved at their buses as they breezed along Normandy's winding roads. And they cried for themselves – sometimes for the first time.

"When (you) see that cemetery . . ." began D-Day veteran Michael Scanlon, 73, of Sarasota, Fla. Then, choked with tears, he whispered, "I can't talk. I have nothing more to say."

This was a day when others spoke for them.

"Oh, they may walk with a little less spring in their step, and their ranks are growing thinner, but let us never forget, when they were young, these men saved the world," said President Clinton, born two years and two months after D-Day. His is a generation removed from the half a million troops who assaulted the beaches here.

"They were the fathers we never knew, the uncles we never met, the friends who never returned, the heroes we can never repay," said Clinton during his plaintive, and closely-watched, speech at the American Cemetery above Omaha beach.

"They gave us our world," he concluded, simply.

Then, in a poignant moment, he asked D-Day veterans in the crowd to rise to accept recognition "if they can."

Though ruddy-faced and stoop-shouldered, most stood to soak up the applause, rising neatly in matching unit service caps and jackets. They were the same proud veterans who march in step but sometimes seem oddly out of time during traditional Fourth of July parades. But this day, especially this day, no one could deny their pride – as conspicuous as the battle ribbons on their chest and just as straight and narrow.

Not all generational scars were healed. Even in their proud moment, some veterans were troubled by the untested commander-in-chief before them. Former CBS anchorman Walter Cronkite, who was at D-Day as a reporter, drew more applause than Clinton, who symbolized not just a new generation but a resistance to the Vietnam War that many could never accept.

"To stand up there and represent the fallen veterans – I didn't think that it was right," said Richard Ring, a Navy machinist's mate on D-Day. "It's not right he should be here talking about them when he evaded being one of them."

Others, hesitant to criticize their commander-in-chief, demurred. Asked if he applauded Clinton at Pointe du Hoc, Army Ranger Cecil Fray, 70, of Louisville, Ky., said: "It's too cold. We had our hands in our pockets."

Yet, to look out among the thousands of veterans here was to see a generation come to terms with its children, the '60s generation grown staid and respectable with marriage, mortgages and children. Or was it the children – represented by Clinton and millions of baby boomers back home – who had come to terms with their fathers?

Here, the oldest faces could imagine being young again in another time. Back then, they were rebellious and courageous. And on this day, they commanded respect and esteem and devotion. Earnest young soldiers escorted frail old veterans to their seats and attended patiently to their needs.

In the veterans assistance tent, Staff Sgt. Brady Batchelor, 36, dispensed grave locations and collected D-Day autographs in a book about the invasion. "It's very meaningful to me that a man 18 years of age or so put his life on the line for the freedom we have today. My mission remains the same as theirs."

But he and the men of D-Day grew up in far different times. Then, words like duty, honor, country did not mark your age. Now, the children who once dismissed such beliefs as quaint or even hopelessly antiquated, have reconsidered – not just the principles but the people who held them.

"They mean everything to us," said Sgt. Nathan Rogers, 23, an Army Ranger at the Pointe du Hoc ceremony to honor the 225 World War II Rangers who took the heavily fortified post. "We wouldn't have existed if not for them. They definitely set the standard."

Some veterans still doubt that standard will survive their passing. After all, since their youth the world has become full of grays, the causes less clear-cut.

"D-Day will be remembered for what it means to fight for freedom," said former Army Ranger Milton Moss, 69, of Phoenix. "Hopefully we won't have to do it again."

While sons and grandsons – and now daughters and granddaughters – may go on to fight new wars, few believe war will return here, to these bomb-scarred cliffs now softened with green grass. This is where the D-Day veterans returned Monday, to a field of white marble and 50 miles of beach dotted with hulking monuments to their exploits.

This is where they made history and where history animates the living as they walk this ground dedicated to the dead.

"If you come down here, everything is fresh in your mind," said Moises deGuzman, who lost a brother in World War II.

"You don't have to read books. You find dates and places and you can re-create in your mind who these young people were and the things in life they missed," he said, tears dropping to his jacket. "These (buried) people remind me of my brother."

But this cemetery offers another reminder to these gray-haired old warriors. It is that youth is a fleeting thing. Sometimes, as on D-Day, it ends at the grave. But most times, as these wizened veterans know, it trickles away like the sands that ripple on Omaha Beach below.

"I find it difficult to believe 22-year-olds were waging that war," said Edward MacLean, of Valley Stream, N.Y. "I wonder how we did it."

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: D-Day 50th anniversary: Veterans recognized for contributions