I have the rare privilege of speaking for a victorious army of almost five million fighting men. They, and the women who have so able assisted them, constitute the Allied Expeditionary Force that has liberated Western Europe. They have destroyed or captured enemy armies totaling more than their own strength, and swept triumphantly forward over the hundreds of miles separating Cherbourg from Lubeck, Leipzig and Munich.

More than three years ago Great Britain, China and Russia were desperately defending themselves against the onslaughts of mighty military machines, deliberately prepared to implement the Axis purpose to dominate the world. The dastardly crime of Pearl Harbor brought us suddenly and actively into that war. Our nation, always unwilling to attribute evil purposes to any people, and unready to withstand surprise attack, found itself beaten back from some of its important outposts and unable to take prompt and effective action to combat the enemy’s designs. But America, fortunate in the quality of her leadership, did not become the easy prey envisaged by her self-confident assailants. Our late great President immediately met with that other indomitable spirit, Prime Minister Churchill, the man who had successfully led his country through the dark days of ‘40 and ‘41, when Great Britain stood defiantly alone as the unconquered foe of Nazism.

Even while Allied defenses in the far Pacific were still crumbling under the swift attacks of the Japanese, these great leaders, and their able lieutenants, began devising the gigantic plan of which the first two difficult parts have now reached glorious consummation.

In the very beginning the United States and Great Britain determined to combine themselves into a true partnership for the persecution of the war. They adopted as their first objective the crushing of the European Axis. This task they undertook first because only here was it possible for three great powers, Russia, Great Britain and the United States, to concentrate their full might against one part of the widely separated Axis powers.

Realizing that battlefield efficiency demanded unification in action as well as in purpose, American and Great Britain decided to place their combined forces, in every theater, under single command. Air - ground - navy - supply - all have been combined into one great team without regard to national or personal considerations. Into this team have been drawn representatives of many other nations. All have absorbed the same spirit of loyalty and team-play - and their success in working effectively together under conditions of stress and strain - of difficulty and of success - is something of which every participating country can always be proud. Here the United Nations have proved the possibilities of real cooperation. And let me remind you, at home, of your own place in this team. Without your unremitting labor, your financial and moral support - without your determination, nothing could have been accomplished. We, here, clearly recognize this and are proud to feel that you and ourselves are one.

With the progress of the war in this Theater every family, every individual, is familiar. The dramatic accomplishments of G.I. Joe and his comrades of every nation - fighting in the air, on the land and on the sea - have been recorded for you daily by press and radio.

Starting first with a diversionary but most important attack in North Africa, a bitter campaign ensued in which the United Nations regained the use of the Mediterranean as a valuable channel of communications. The enemy forces in Africa were utterly destroyed, and Italy as a Fascist power was knocked out of the war. With these purposes achieved, the United Nations - with the huge quantities of supplies, special equipment and forces they had in the meantime developed - were ready to initiate the principal feature of their European strategy, the assault directly across the English Channel.

Since that June day when our men first landed upon the Normandy beaches, one of the notable campaigns of all time has been carried out. Working in effective cooperation with the great Red Army and the Allied Forces fighting in Italy, the French, British, American and other Allied Forces in this Theater have battled their way with ever-increasing speed and power through the most formidable defenses that Germany could devise.

The soldier, the sailor and the airmen, supported by the devoted efforts of thousands laboring in the services of supply, and aided by numerous comrades in the Resistance movement, first won the battle of the beaches. They won the pursuit across France, the campaign to destroy the Germans West of the Rhine and the crossing of that historic obstacle. Then they pierced to the heart of Germany to join up there with their Russian and Allied comrades coming from the East and from the South. This has been no separate war of air, of ground, or of sea. All have been welded together into one engine of avenging power - to the dismay and destruction of our enemies.

These startling successes have not been bought without sorrow and suffering. In this Theater alone 80,000 Americans and comparable numbers among their Allies, have had their lives cut short that the rest of us might live in the sunlight of freedom. Four hundred thousand of our citizens have borne the pain of physical wounds, and additional thousands have suffered privation in Nazi prison camps. The American men and women of this Theater, constituting the mightiest military force the United States has ever committed to action, solemnly salute our honored dead and extend to every relative, to every friend of all these, our deepest sentiments of respect and sympathy.

But, at last, this part of the job is done. No more will there flow from this Theater to the United States those doleful lists of dead and loss that have brought so much sorrow to American homes. The sounds of battle have faded from the European scene.

Permit me now a more personal word.

It was my great honor, and equal responsibility, to command Allied Forces in the Mediterranean, and, later, the Allied Expeditionary Force in Europe. This gives me the right to voice my lasting appreciation to numbers of people that have by their consideration, their understanding and their efficiency, made my task a bearable one.

To my own superiors in the British-American Combined Chiefs of Staff and the political heads of our two countries, I address my profound thanks. We here realize fully the immeasurable debt we owe to their wisdom, their forbearance and their staunch support. We trust that all our people have the same realization.

Merely to name my own present and former principal subordinates in this Theater is to present a picture of the utmost in loyalty, skill, selflessness, and efficiency. The United Nations will gratefully remember Tedder, Bradley, Montgomery, Ramsey, Spaatz, de Lattre and countless others. But all these agree with me in the selection of the truly heroic man of this war. He is G.I. Joe, and his counterpart in the air, the navy, and the Merchant Marine of every one of the United Nations. He has surmounted the dangers of U-boat infested seas; of bitter battles in the air; of desperate charges into defended beaches; of tedious, dangerous, fighting against the ultimate in fortified zones. He has uncomplainingly endured cold, mud, fatigue; his companion has been danger, and death has trailed his footsteps. He and his platoon and company leaders have given to us a record of gallantry, loyalty, devotion to duty and patient endurance that will warm our hearts for as long as those qualities excite our admiration.

So - history's mightiest machine of conquest has been utterly destroyed. The deliberate design of brutal, world-wide rape that the German nation eagerly absorbed from the diseased brain of Hitler, has met the fate decreed for it by outraged justice. The self-styled super-race that six years ago set out on a career of pillage is now groveling amongst the ruins of its own shattered cities as it fearfully hopes for a better fate than it inflicted upon its own helpless victims. Throughout the United Nations the rejoicing bells peal forth.

Those bells voice our happiness that the Nazi scourge has been eliminated from the earth. But for the remaining enemy of humankind - Japan - those bells are sounding an imminent doom. The complete armed might of liberty and freedom is at last free to turn from the elimination of the principal criminal to the punishment of its equally despicable satellite. Already our comrades in the Pacific have made great inroads into her vitals. Japan herself must now realize her fate is sealed.

All of us here have one underlying ambition; to return speedily to our families. But we entered this war to do our duty to our country and to the cause that remains as sacred today as on that December 7th when we suddenly found ourselves at war. Wherever any man is called he will continue to do his part in assuring the completeness of victory. Some of us will stay here to police the areas and the nation that we have conquered, so that systems of justice and of order may prevail. Some will be called upon to participate in the Pacific war. But some - and I trust in ever-increasing numbers - will soon experience the joy of returning home.

I speak for the more than three million Americans in this Theater in saying that, when we are so fortunate as to come back to you, there need be no welcoming parades, no special celebrations. All we ask is to come back into the warmth of the hearts we left behind and to resume once more pursuits of peace - under our own American conceptions of liberty and of right, in which our beloved country has always dealt.