D:Day: 65 years since the world was freed from tyranny

Civilisation, itself, was in peril.

The freedom and hope of future generations lay in the hands of the millions of men and women - the soldiers, the sailors, the airmen, the support teams - that had been training for months in Britain for one defining campaign.

And on this day in 1944, they launched an operation that was as epic in scale as it was in aspiration.

Its aim was to execute the first successful opposed landing launched from across the English Channel in 900 years.

They were part of the largest armada history has seen - around 200,000 naval and merchant navy personnel, 160,000 landing troops, more than 12,000 aircraft, and almost 7,000 vessels in an invasion fleet drawn from eight different navies.

This was a truly international effort.

British, Americans and Canadians stood shoulder to shoulder with French, Belgians, Norwegians, Poles, Czechs, Dutch, and the Australians and New Zealanders who had crossed the globe to play their part.

Their mission wasn’t simply to storm the Normandy beaches, and scale the cliffs.

It was to free a continent.

A ferocious storm dictated that the planned landing be delayed by 24 hours.

But 65 years ago today, under the pale light of a full moon, the D-Day legend that paved the way for the final victory 14 months later was born.

We should never forget that there could be no V-E Day without D-Day.

No V-E Day without our brave allies who came to liberate, not to conquer, and partisans who simply wanted to reclaim their countries.

During that northern summer, it was as if history was racing.

At Pointe du Hoc. At Sword, Gold, Omaha, Juno, Arnhem. The Battle of the Bulge.

The losses sustained on that stretch of French coast, and in the fields and towns of Normandy, were huge.

An estimated 2,500 Allied troops died on that first day alone, with many more – and countless civilians - in the days and weeks that followed.

Families and friendships were torn apart; unbreakable bonds of comradeship and sacrifice were forged.

Millions more lives were lost between that day and August of the following year, so that we could receive the blessing of that ordinary, decent life on earth that we too often now take for granted.

Today, we remember their talents; their promise; their uncompleted happiness.

The years never spent with their children, with their wives, or with their sweethearts.

Today, in a time of terrorism and insurgencies, when the enemy is often unknown and unseen, we also look back to a different time, when evil was known to be evil, and our purpose known to be righteous.

We look back too, at a generation – including my father, who fought at Dunkirk, El Alamein, and the Italian campaign, and my mother, who helped make parts for Spitfires - that possessed a quality of spontaneous decency, comradeship, and who thought in the plural, about “we”, not “me”.

It was a generation that also endured bereavement, privation, smashed cities, and enduring separations from loved ones that is unimaginable to us now.

And it fuelled the subsequent mass migration to the new world, to build new lives.

It is these fallen and surviving heroes in that great cause for freedom that we salute, remember, and honour today.

Each year, at our Anzac Day march, I take close note of the pride, the still, straight backs, and the quiet dignity of the Normandy Veterans.

With the sad passing of Australia’s last World War One Digger - Jack Ross, aged 110 – in Bendigo earlier this week, it is our World War Two veterans who now stand as our direct link to the darkest days of global conflict.

Like all who have endured the battlefield, they hoped that the War they fought would be the last.

Sadly, that has not been the case.

So today is not a celebration, it is a remembrance.

It is an acknowledgement that, in the worst of times and at a massive cost of life, this generation did its best for freedom, for civilisation, and for the future we know, but they could only imagine.

We remember them and their fallen comrades, as the best of our breed, the saviours of all we cherish, and the architects of who and what we are.

That’s because theirs is the standard, and theirs is the courage to which we will always aspire.

Theirs is the achievement to which there is no equal.

Their longest day gave us a better world, and for that, we thank them.

Lest we forget.