Here with you are over 60 veterans who landed on D-day. Our debt to you is everlasting. Today we express our undying gratitude. When you were young, these men enlisted their lives in a great crusade, one of the greatest of all times. Their mission is the story of an epic battle and the ferocious, eternal struggle between good and evil. On the 6th of June, 1944, they joined a liberation force of awesome power and breathtaking scale. After months of planning, the Allies had chosen this ancient coastline to mount their campaign to vanquish the wicked tyranny of the Nazi empire from the face of the Earth.

The Navy can lose us the war, but only the Air Force can win it. Therefore our supreme effort must be to gain overwhelming mastery in the Air. In no other way at present visible can we hope to overcome the immense military power of Germany.

We shall defend every village, every town and every city. The vast mass of London itself, fought street by street, could easily devour an entire hostile army; and we would rather see London laid in ruins and ashes than that it should be tamely and abjectly enslaved.

At the summit the stamina and valour of our fighter pilots remained unconquerable and supreme.

The Normandy invasion was based on a deep-seated faith in the power of the Air Force in overwhelming numbers to intervene in the land battle ... making it possible for a small force of land troops to invade a continent.

The Frogs are getting all they can for nothing, and we are getting nothing for all we can.