Folks, this is Bob Hope speaking from a P-38 Airfield out here near Van Nuys, California. We looked forward to being with these men and doing our regular show here, but of course, nobody feels like getting up and being funny on a night like this. Still, we did want to go through with our plans and visit with these fellas, because these are the same kind of boys who are flying those 11,000 planes in our big effort.

What’s happened during these last few hours not one of us will ever forget. How could you forget? You sat up all night by the radio and heard the bulletins, the flashes, the voices coming across from England. The commentators. The pilots returning from their greatest of all missions. Newsboys yelling in the street.

It seemed that one world was ending and a new world beginning—that history was closing one book and opening a new one. Somehow, we knew it had to be a better one.

You sat there, and dawn began to sneak in, and you thought of the hundreds of thousands of kids you’d seen in camps these past two or three years. The kids who scream and whistle when they hear a gag and a song. And now you could see all of them again—in 4,000 ships on the English Channel, tumbling out of thousands of planes over Normandy, on the occupied coast, in countless landing barges crashing the Nazi gate, going on through to do the job.

That’s the job of all of us.

The sun came up, and you sat there, looking at that huge black headline—that one great black word with the exclamation point:

INVASION!

The one word the whole world has waited for. That all of us have worked for. We knew we’d wake up one morning and have to meet it face to face—a word in which America’s invested everything these 30 long months.

The efforts of millions of Americans: building planes and weapons, the shipyards and the men who took the stuff across. Little kids buying war stamps. Housewives straining bacon grease. Farmers working around the clock. Millions of young men sweating it out in camps and fighting the battles that paved the way for that headline this morning.

Now the investment must pay—for this generation and all generations to come.

And folks, what a wonderful thing it is that no matter the price, the reward will be greater than the sacrifice. We hope that thought can go along with the prayer tonight—the prayer of a whole nation:

God bless those kids across the English Channel.

Well folks, it’s old “Auld Lang Syne” time with all of us here tonight—the last show of a season has given us a lifetime of memories. We’d like to thank all the people who’ve given us those memories, but the list is longer than a roller towel.

At the top of the list are kids like these here at Van Nuys and in camps all over America. Right beside them are you folks out there in the homes these kids are fighting for.

And I’d like to thank the swell gang who help us hang this Tuesday night show together.

Yes sir, the last program of the season—and a couple of days ago, maybe that would have seemed important to us. But General Eisenhower and America’s finest have opened a new season with a new show that tops anything on Earth. A new season for freedom—and a show that’s playing the four corners of the globe. And when that show is over, freedom’s enemies will never open again.

Let’s all hope—and work—and pray—that it may be a short, successful season.

Folks, we’ll be seeing you again next year. And the best of the best to you and your boys across the sea.

Good night.