WASHINGTON — Nearly 60 years after the guns fell silent, the nation Saturday saluted 16 million ordinary Americans who stopped a storm of tyranny and changed the world.
The official dedication of the World War II Memorial, 17 years in coming, was the centerpiece of a day of pomp and grand gestures, small tributes and choked back tears.
Three presidents, movie stars, lawmakers, military brass and leaders from countries defeated by America and her allies hailed the thousands of veterans of "The Big One" and their families assembled at the afternoon ceremony, and millions more not able to attend.
Forever more, the speakers said, their sacrifices and their uncomplaining willingness to make them would be remembered. At an unimaginable cost — 405,400 GIs dead, 670,000 wounded — the 16.4 million U.S. soldiers saved Europe and the Pacific from the grip of tyrants and fanatics bent on stomping freedom from the map.
"Because of their sacrifice, tyrants fell, fascism and Nazism were vanquished, and freedom prevailed," President Bush said. Arrayed behind him were his World War II vet father, former Presidents George H.W. Bush, and President Bill Clinton, who signed a 1993 measure authorizing the monument.
Those assembled on the National Mall dabbed their eyes at such sentiments, tapped their toes to the marches played by military bands, applauded the ceremonial flyover of Air Force jets, and rose, some shakily, to sing the national anthem with obvious feeling.
As if in deference to their age, Washington's recent punishing heat broke for the day and a gentle sun highlighted the fields of white hair and colorful veteran's caps of those assembled on the National Mall. In the face of the government's warning earlier in the week that the event might prove tempting to terrorists, security was strict. But all proved peaceful.
Concerns about the physical and emotional strains the event might place on fragile octogenarians led to the deployment of paramedics on bicycles with defibrillators on their backs, psychiatric social workers and missing-person detectives to tend to those needing help. An estimated 2,500 of those with tickets for the ceremony came in wheelchairs, 1,740 with canes, and 39 with oxygen tanks.
Far fewer than the estimated 200,000 folks organizers believed were going to attend actually did. Scores of reserved seats sat empty.
By all accounts, those who did make it, many of whom were accompanied by their graying baby boomer children, managed just fine.
Those who made it to Saturday's dedication are no doubt the hardiest and most mobile of the estimated 4 million WWII veterans still alive but dying now at the rate of about 1,100 a day. For those without the health or financial resources to make it to Washington, communities across the nation held events at which local vets could gather together to watch the simulcast ceremony.
For those on the Mall, and no doubt those back home, it was a day both sad and sweet. To many, the memorial's primary purpose is to remember the GIs who fell in a war so brutal that a single battle, such as that for Hurtgen Forest on the German-Belgian border in 1944-45, could last five months and leave 24,000 Americans dead, wounded or missing.
From the ceremony's stage, Bush, actor Tom Hanks, NBC News anchor and author Tom Brokaw, retired senator and gravely wounded World War II vet Bob Dole and other speakers said the memorial also stands as a testament to the millions of women and others who served on the home front.
There, they endured rationing, worked triple shifts to churn out 303,000 war planes, rolled thousands of miles worth of bandages, donated 13 million pints of blood, and bought millions of War Bonds.
"We have raised this memorial to commemorate the service and sacrifice of an entire generation," said Dole, who raised millions in private funds for the memorial. "It is long overdue."
Given their fading futures, vets like Chuck Larcom, 80, of Atlanta, counted themselves lucky to have lived long enough to see the $172-million memorial's completion.
"I waited 60 years for this," said Larcom, who served in the U.S. Army Air Force in the Pacific and planned his Washington trip for a year. "I'm very touched — I wish the guys that got killed —that bothers me the most — could be here."
Ask a vet there to name the men in his platoon, and odds are they would rattle off not only names but nicknames, hometowns and personal idiosyncrasies as if they had seen their comrades just last week. Many teared up at the mention of their fallen buddies, some crying in public for the first time about their losses of long ago.
"It's like yesterday," said Dewey Conn, 82, of Floyd County, Ky., about the past which, for him, entailed a year in a German prison of war camp and an 87-day road march in deep winter that left hundreds of U.S. soldiers dead and him barely alive.
As his lower lip trembled at the memory, a young woman approached and spontaneously hugged him. A stranger, she told Conn her grandfather had died before the memorial was finished. She thanked Conn, who was a B-24 gunner shot down over Germany, for "saving our country" and then moved on, leaving the retired coal plant worker speechless at her lovely gesture.
Though the 7.4-acre memorial itself was closed Saturday for security reasons, it has been the site of countless such sweet moments in recent days.
A group of four newly minted Marines, none older than 20, and all bound for Iraq in three months, walked the perimeter of the memorial Friday, thanking veterans with a handshake. A Vietnam War vet from the Army's 101st Airborne Division embraced Guy Whidden, 81, a thrice-wounded 101st private first class who landed at Normandy Beach on D-Day.
Along the granite that rims pools of water on the edges of the memorial are engraved the names of the biggest battles. Visitors are leaving roses and an array of old photos and other mementoes there.
Near the Normandy Beach section, someone left a plastic bag with rocks from that shore inside. Elsewhere, there was a note from "Dennis Blocker II" to "Great Grandpa Sober, 30th Inf. Div, 2nd HQ Co., KIA - 27 Oct 44. . . . Love from great grand son. . . . I'm so thankful and proud of you."
In tents set up elsewhere on the Mall, veterans told their stories to court reporters volunteering to record reflections on the war. Other vets looked for men they slept next to for months in the cold and mud, and never saw in the 60 years hence. Kermit Hancock, 82, of Baltimore, was lucky to find three of his buddies from the past.
He and others who made history as a 16-million strong "band of brothers" — average men who fought the war, came home, quietly put it all behind them, and went on with their lives — still found it hard to believe that they finally had their own national memorial.
"I can't get over this," said John Raucci, 82, of Stuart, Fla., an Army sergeant shot at Guadalcanal in the Pacific theater. "To me, this is the greatest honor I can think of."
Contributing: Joel Eskovitz, and Foundation interns Bravetta Hassell, Jamar Hudson and Crysanthe Warrington.