Delivered by Ronald Reagan on the 40th Anniversary of D-Day, at the Pointe du Hoc Memorial in Normandy, France .

We're here to mark that day in history when the Allied armies joined in battle to reclaim this continent to liberty. Forty 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. 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..

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?... We look at you and somehow we know the answer. It was faith and belief; it was loyalty and love. 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. 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."