Editor’s Note: What follows is the text of the speech given by Marc Lefevre, mayor of Sainte-Mè re-É glise honoring Fred B. Morgan Jr. and Duaine Pinkston, medics of the 505 PIR, 82nd AB. Mr. Morgan traveled to Normandy this week for the event; a story about his trip appears on Page Five in today’s edition.

Welcome and thanks to the 600 plus paratroop ers participating here today. At this site charged full of history, this jump is a tribute to the memory of the 14,000 parachutists who jumped during the night of the fifth through the early morning of the sixth of June 1944. Their mission consisted of taking control of roads, intersections and bridges necessary to the success of the landing of troops at Utah Beach. Here, like elsewhere, the battles were unmerciful but never was the enemy able to regain these first claims of liberty.

We are also particularly honored and proud to greet among us here some of the parachutists who touched down and fought here or in the vicinity. Welcome to Robert Noody, Lou Vecchi, Zane Schlemmer, Don Jakeway, Ray Fary, Bill Sullivan and Wilson Colwell. Welcome also to the veterans here today who landed at Omaha Beach, who served in the U.S. Air Force or in the U.S. Navy. Welcome to our British veterans, but also to the German veterans present here today.

This year, the AVA association Friends of American Veterans, wished to particularly remind us of the memory and the courage of the medical teams in unveiling a plaque in their honor. We know how much the medics, doctors, nurses and stretcher-carriers contributed to the morale and the commitment of their comrades. On the battlefield, or in close proximity, they eased their suffering, their wounds and their pain. For these medics and doctors, any person wounded had the right to be helped and treated, certainly their comrades in arms but also the civilians and even those fighting for the enemy.

We honor Robert Wright, who will receive tomorrow the Legion of Honor; he, with Kenneth Moore, is the medic who transformed the little church of Angoville-au-Plain in the middle of the fighting by the 101st Division into a first aid station, open to all.

We honor the presence of Fred Morgan and Duaine Pinkston of the First Battalion, 505 PIR, of the 82th AB. In this area during the three days of battle for the bridge, the two of them treated their first wounded in Normandy. We are honored that 67 years later, they could personally unveil this plaque in the name and memory of their own.

Fred Morgan began his paratrooper career in 1942 with the creation of his unit by then Lieut. Col. Gavin, who would later become the general admired and respected by all his men of the 82nd AB division. Fred Morgan participated in all the campaigns of the 505, beginning in North Africa and parachuting in all four jumps of the 505: Sicily, Salerno in Italy, Normandy and Groesbeck, Holland, then continuing into the Ardennes for the Battle of the Bulge before entering Germany. In Normandy, he established a First Battalion Aid Station close to La Fière several steps away from here before following his unit to Montebourg, St. Saveur and La Haye-du-Puits. He began the war as a sergeant and finished as Lieut. Colonel. He is decorated with the Purple Heart.

Having just turned 20 years old, Duaine Pinkston made his first jump at La Fière in the same battalion as Fred Morgan. He went on to follow the same path with the C Company in Normandy, then Holland and Belgium. Wounded three times, once in treating a wounded German, Duaine Pinkston believed that he had seen all the horrors of war in early May 1945. But the worst was to co me when he participated in the liberation of theWöbbelin concentration camp, an annex created by the Nazis only six weeks earlier, as an extension of the Neuengamme work camp. He remembers that overwhelmed by such barbarity, the troops forced the nearby townspeople to enter the camp and bury the c orpses.

The journey of these men tells us about the journey of all our liberators, their sufferance, their sacrifice and their immense generosity; they show us also that their humanity was stronger than the barbarism, and that all men in distress had the right to their help and their compassion. The rightness of their values fueled their force and their courage.

If these veterans come back again today despite the weight of the years, it’s also to remind us the price paid by their comrades, so that today we live in peace and as free men. Above their own lives, they held the values they esteemed essential to humanity and without which no peace nor liberty could ever be solidly built upon: these values called tolerance, respect for all men and democracy.

Today we need to measure the price of peace but also to be aware that it is fragile. We need to ensure that it shall never be compromised. This is our duty, we owe it to them.

Long live the French-American friendship.

And long live the friendship and respect between all the people on this earth.