Remembering D-Day (Transcript)

Bob Barney shares the words of FDR and Eisenhower during the Normandy invasion and speaks of his sentiment for honoring those that have fallen on this day…

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO BOB’S 7:11 BROADCAST: REMEMBERING D-DAY

Prayer on D-Day Franklin D. Roosevelt: 32nd President of the United States: 1933 ‐ 1945

…Almighty God, our sons, pride of our nation, this day is set upon a mighty endeavor…a struggle to preserve our Republic, our religion, and our civilization…and to set free a suffering humanity. Lead them straight through, given strength to their arms and stoutness to their hearts and steadfastness in their faith…they will need they blessings, their road will be long and hard for the enemy is strong, he may hurl back our forces, success may not come with rushing speed but we shall return again and again and we know that by thy grace, and y the righteousness of our cause, our sons will triumph. They will be sore tried by night and by day, without rest until the victory is won. The darkness will be rent by noise and flame. Men’s souls will be shaken with the violences of war. For these men are lately drawn from the ways of peace. They fight not for the lust of conquest, they fight to end conquest, they fight to liberate, they fight to let justice arise and tolerance and goodwill among all thy people. They yearn but for the end of battle, for their return to the haven of home. Amen.

Bob: Well, you may not believe this in this day and age but that was the president of the United States, a liberal Democrat, in 1944, June 6th, D-Day, with a prayer calling on God to defend our troops as they were landing on the beaches in D-Day and Normandy beaches and Omaha beaches. Many people may have watched a lot of movies that were made back in the 50s and 60s and early 70s about D-Day. It was a major event.

The famous picture of then David Eisenhower, general of the army of all the armies of the allied powers in Europe, meeting the paratroopers, which he was told that they would have 50 to 75 casualties. And the people that he was speaking to that night, wishing them well, he knew was going to all be maimed or die or be lost in their initial invasion. And by the grace of God, they had very little casualties.

God overlooked D-Day. A few weeks ago, in a Q & A show, I asked a trivia question…what does D stand for D-Day? Did not stand for decision day or anything like that. It stood for “day”. So, it’s really called D-Day. D-Day is D-Day. But to get more serious here, American forces landed in what was at that time, the greatest assault, aquatic assault, sea landing assault that had ever happened in the world, probably until Incheon in South Korea in 1950.

The American soldiers fought horrible odds against them. The Nazis were dug into the shores of Normandy with all kinds of razor wire and fortresses and machine guns. Many soldiers were just gunned down the second they hit the beach. They were just gunned right down. The water was red with blood. The water was not the color of the ocean.

Everywhere soldiers looked, they saw red water. It would remind I guess, someone today of what happened when Moses turned the Nile River to red, where every part of the river was red. Well, according to people who were there, who gave interviews, or one of which I actually talked to about four years ago, five years ago now, when my mother was in an old age home that we had to get her out of.

And he was one of those that went into Iwo Jima, not D-Day, but was saying about how the water just turned blood red and the bodies were a putrid smell because they’re in the sun. It was just a terrible, terrible thing that happened when our soldiers landed on the ground. But we stayed. We did not get pushed back as we were afraid we’d be pushed back. And our soldiers were able to stay on solid ground, did not give up an inch, and actually kept moving inward. And with the grace of God, D-Day turned out to be a great success. And it could have been a great failure.

The German nation was a very powerful nation. And I don’t believe in my heart Americans have faced enemies like Japan and Germany in recent years. We faced inferior enemies, enemies that did not have the training and the skill and the equipment and the technology of either Japan or Germany. Germany was an awesome, awesome force against us, but we were able to prevail. And God did listen to prayer. And I think he listened to the Franklin Roosevelt prayer that day. And the idea, and by the way, I think I mentioned this in a previous broadcast when I mentioned this before, FDR wrote that speech. He didn’t have a speech writer write that speech. He himself wrote that speech. He believed in God. Maybe he had a little fractured idea of God, but he believed in a God and he believed in prayer.And he thought that the leader of the country praying for all the troops might have some kind of bearing with God. And maybe it did, because God did open up Normandy and the beaches for our troops. And D-Day turned out to be a great success, but at the cost of thousands of American lives over the next weeks of battle, as we kept moving inward into France after landing on the shores of D-Day.

Well, today is June 6th and its D-Day. And it’s the anniversary of D-Day. And I really forgot to do the math of how many years it’s been. I remember Ronald Reagan’s D-Day speech in 1984; it was a very moving speech. And then again, in 1994 was the 50th anniversary of D-Day. And Bill Clinton did give a pretty good speech, I will admit.

The occasion is just too much for younger people. I did not experience war. My brother did. My oldest brother went to Vietnam. He experienced war, but I have not experienced war. And I just know from the people who have experienced war that I have been friends with or talked to or had some kind of association with. I know that war is, as General MacArthur called it, the greatest sin of mankind. But there are times when we are commanded by our God that we must fight for what are Godly purposes.

King David was a fighter. Because he was a fighter, he couldn’t build a temple. But he was a fighter, and we should never forget that. We owe our military a great deal over the years of how they have protected our liberties and our freedoms and our Constitution. And today, I’m afraid we’re losing that. In another week or so, we have the June 14th Day of Fasting and Prayer, which I do hope enough Americans pay attention and do so.

Because God Almighty will listen if the majority of Americans still care about what God thinks is going on. If God is pleased with that prayer and fast day, God may prolong our days before this country comes to a very poor conclusion and into captivity by aliens that live amongst us. And that is prophesied in the Bible for what’s going to happen to the lost tribes of Israel, which the United States of America is the leading lost tribe of Israel. Joseph, Ephraim, Joseph’s younger son, is the United States of America in prophecy. The Jewish people are never Israel in the prophecies of the Old Testament. The Jewish people are always in the prophecies concerning Judah, never Israel.

Israel always means the lost ten tribes, which is predominantly manned by the tribe of Joseph, which owns the name Israel. You can read that in Genesis. Jacob was renamed Israel when he struggled with God and prevailed, gave his name to Joseph’s two sons and said, let my name be on them. Jacob then adopted them as his own sons. And the 13th tribe was formed, Ephraim, because up until then there was 12 tribes of Israel and Joseph was one of the 12 tribes. But after the special blessing that Jacob gave Joseph’s two sons, Joseph ceased being the tribe, but his two sons became tribes in their own right. Therefore, from then on, there was a tribe of Manasseh, which was England, and there was a tribe of Ephraim, which is the United States of America. And that was the only way you can understand prophecy of your Bible. When it talks about Judah, that means the Jews. When it talks about Israel, it means the United States or England. And the other lost tribes that part of Israel are like Denmark and France and the Netherlands, which is Naphtali, one of the 12 sons. And it’s important, not for your salvation, to know who the tribes are and where the people of the world are today. But if you’re living today, it’s good to know who the people and who the players are, because the Bible tells you. It’s a news source. I keep saying that the Bible is not just what people think is a religious book of laws and rules and regulations.

It is a book that gives you previous news that already has occurred, called history. And it also gives you prophecy, which is tomorrow’s headlines, that you can know today by reading the Bible. And it’s the only document, it’s the only newspaper that I know of that accurately predicts the future and is never going to be wrong. But I think it’s a good time to stop today and remember all of those men that stormed the on the line for what? For strangers they didn’t know back in America, to give them the right to have liberty, to give them the right to burn the American flag, to give them the right to be communist, to give them the right to be racist, to give them the right to be anything they want to be as long as they break no laws. And so these people, which many people call the greatest generation, I disagree with that statement, but they are a great generation. My father was and my uncle was also a part of that generation.

But the truth is they laid down their lives in many cases for perfect strangers back at home could have the freedoms that we have today. And I think it’s very, very important that we remember D-Day this day and remember what was done for us. General Eisenhower at the beginning of D-Day wrote an actual resignation letter assuming that the day could become a disaster for American troops. And he resigned and took full responsibility for the defeat. He took no chances and he decided to write that before D-Day, even though he was hoping he would win, he was expecting that possibly they would lose. Many troops would die. The American forces would be disgraced; he was a man, and he took full responsibility in a resignation letter that never had to be read. But what he did say on the day of D-Day to his troops to motivate them was again, Eisenhower at his best.

And I want to play that today right now for you.

Sailors and airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Force, you are about to embark upon the great crusade toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes and prayers of liberty loving people everywhere march with you. In company with our brave allies and brothers in arms on other fronts, you will bring about the destruction of the German war machine, the elimination of Nazi tyranny over the oppressed peoples of Europe, and security for ourselves in a free world. Your task will not be an easy one. Your enemy is well-trained, well-equipped and battle-hardened. He will fight savagely. But this is the year 1944. Much has happened since the Nazi triumphs of 1940, 41. The United Nations have inflicted upon the Germans great defeats in open battle, man to man. Our air offensive has seriously reduced their strength in the air and their capacity to wage war on the ground.

Our home fronts have given us an overwhelming superiority in weapons and munitions of war and placed at our disposal great reserves of trained fighting men. The tide has turned. The free men of the world are marching together to victory. I have full confidence in your courage, devotion to duty and skill in battle. We will accept nothing less than full victory.

And that was the commander of the American and allied forces of Europe, General Eisenhower, who would later become president of the United States for maybe some of the younger people who may not know their history, became one of the best presidents, even though people didn’t think he tried very hard. He made it look easy, but maybe great presidents and great leaders make their job look easy. I know the presidents that make their jobs look difficult, like the Jimmy Carters, the Barack Obamas, the Joe Bidens, they tend to be the loser presidents who do the worst harm to the American character and to the American people of anybody else. But people that make the job look easy, they do so because they’re well prepared and they know what they’re doing.

No one can say that Dwight Eisenhower was not a great leader. He was a great politician because in order to be the allied commander of all the free forces of Europe, that’s England, that’s the free forces of France, that’s the free forces of the Netherlands and all of these other Scandinavia and all these other countries that were fighting against the Germans, it is important to realize that every one of them had leaders and generals and military people who had egos a mile wide. Montgomery comes to mind in England. General Montgomery had an ego that was wider than the Nile River. His nemesis really was not Germany, it was not Adolf Rommel in the desert…his true nemesis was none other than George Patton, who also had an ego two miles wide, a little wider than Montgomery’s and those two dueled it out all the way to the end of the war.

And it was General Eisenhower’s job to make everybody eventually pull together and stop their differences and kind of control their egos. And it was a hard job for him to do. And Winston Churchill for his part, realized the job that Eisenhower had to do. Winston Churchill ended up siding with Eisenhower, even against his own generals from time to time, and let Eisenhower know that he fully supported his decisions. More importantly, he believed in his decisions, and he believed that he was a great leader. Only later on, 10 years down the road, the two would be prime minister and president of the United States again, and the two would also be good friends again as well. Winston Churchill was a positive catalyst for Eisenhower in order to subdue some of the big egos of the British Army, Navy, and Air Force, and was able to do so quite adequately.

Many people do not know this, but General MacArthur, who was the chief allied commander of the Pacific, when he was younger and he had an aide, an orderly, a person that was his bookkeeper and his orderly, and his name was Dwight Eisenhower. When Eisenhower was nominated for the presidency, and people believed he was going to win because he was a national hero, MacArthur’s wife asked Mr. or General MacArthur, what do you think, what kind of president do you think Mr. Eisenhower is going to make? And he looked at her, and he puffed on his pipe, and he said, “I think he’ll make a fine president. He was the best clerk that ever worked for me.” And so there was an ego there too as well, but General MacArthur’s ego was well served to the American public.

He also did the impossible in the Pacific, like Eisenhower did the impossible in the Atlantic.

So this will be a little shorter broadcast today. There’s no sense going on. I wanted to give a history lesson about how important D-Day was for the cause of freedom in the world. America is that force that was blessed by God and ordained by God to replace England as the force before us, to replace England as the great force that kept liberty and religious freedom in the world so Christianity could flourish on the four corners of this earth. And it is the United States of America that God used Israel of your Bible to keep the world free from tyrants like Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin down the road, Mao Zedong, and all of these other despots that unfortunately American leaders are trying to emulate today and they think they’re great people and try to say that Trump is the dictator when actually we have a dictator in chief right now in the White House.

But we should remember those who died so we can have freedom and liberty that we are throwing away right now. The American public has thrown away the liberty and the freedom and the God-given rights given by God, that our fathers and grandfathers fought and died for in World War I, World War II, even Korea and Vietnam.

For D-Day and for theplaintruthtoday.com, this is Bob Barney saying thank you for listening. Find a vet and remember him. You’re free because of the vet and your life that you may not know. But freedom comes at a cost, and it comes at a cost of someone else’s life many times and not yours. So again, this is Bob Barney saying thank you for listening have a good, blessed day. Remember the soldiers and remember your God. And do not forget June 14th is coming up when we need to pray and fast to God to look at this country and save us from ourselves because we need all the help we can get.

Until tomorrow, goodbye.