Let us beseech the blessing of almighty god upon this great and noble undertaking (General Dwight Eisenhower)
As June 6th dawned 80 years ago, over 150,000 British, Commonwealth, American and Canadian troops were in landing craft and transport planes heading for Nazi occupied France. The vast majority of them had never seen combat before. It would be the greatest amphibious assault in history. The sheer scale of the logistical operation was equivalent to transporting a medium sized city 100 miles across the sea in one night and in complete secrecy. Everyone knew that D-Day would be the turning point of World War Two one way or another.
General Erwin Rommel, the man charged with protecting the coast of northern Europe believed that if an Allied invasion were to take place on the coast of Normandy that could not be repelled back into the sea in 24 hours, Germany would lose the war. He was right and it came at tremendous cost to both sides, to say nothing of the thousands of civilian casualties.
Iâve been to the beaches and the fields of Normandy so many times over the years to retell the D-Day story to groups both big and small. It must never be airbrushed out of our national story. Every time I stand on that battlefield, and others across Europe, I am more convinced that a spiritual imprint exists in those places, caused by a catastrophic loss of life. Only the Gospel of Jesus Christ can change that.












