They shot rope ladders, pulled themselves up ... These are the boys of Pointe du Hoc. These are the men who took the cliffs.” The “boys,” in the front rows, began to weep.

To honor the occasion more broadly, Reagan chose to focus on “the boys of Pointe du Hoc,” choosing the “lonely windswept point on the northern shores of France” as both the setting and the ...

The assault on Pointe du Hoc was a key battle of the D-Day invasion. Image: National Archives President Reagan addresses the surviving U.S. Army veterans of the assault against Pointe du Hoc on ...