[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 65 (Monday, May 23, 1994)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: May 23, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
         CENTRAL NEW YORK HEROES WERE FIRST IN ACTION ON D-DAY

                                 ______


                          HON. JAMES T. WALSH

                              of new york

                    in the house of representatives

                          Monday, May 23, 1994

  Mr. WALSH. Mr. Speaker, as the 50th Anniversary of D-Day approaches, 
the veterans who were there, facing the Germans on French beaches with 
American names like Omaha and Utah, wait with unique perspective. They 
were young people living in a vast range of emotion. Love of country, 
fear of death, loyalty to friends, rage at the war that had imprisoned 
or killed so many in Europe.
  Supreme Commander of the European Theatre, Dwight Eisenhower, said to 
them only hours before the invasion on June 6, 1944, the military 
maneuver that would eventually be known as the beginning of the end of 
World War II: ``The eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes and 
prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you.'' The 
enemy, he warned, ``is well trained, well equipped and battle-hardened. 
He will fight savagely.''
  And fight savagely the German forces did. On Omaha Beach, the enemy 
was entrenched. The memories of comrades killed before stepping foot on 
French soil will stay with our veterans forever. But before the enemy 
fired a single rocket or a single rifle shot, the Allied plan that 
would ultimately foil the German war machine's evil design was 
unfolding, in fact dropping from the sky--in the form of a Central New 
Yorker, Capt. Frank Lillyman of Skaneateles, NY, an airborne Pathfinder 
in the 101st Airborne. A survivor of the battle but since deceased, 
Lillyman was the lead jumper in the lead plane among those who were 
dropped by parachute at night to set up the smoke pots that would 
ultimately guide the manned Allied gliders drifting behind enemy lines.
  Meanwhile, on the ground, many U.S. Army and Navy personnel from 
Central New York took part in this historic battle. In fact, one might 
say they, too, preceded the pitched battle. The 299th Engineer Combat 
Battalion was made up primarily of people from Syracuse and Onondaga 
County, Auburn and Cayuga County, and to a lesser degree from Ithaca, 
Rochester and Buffalo. Though they were fired upon heavily by the 
German forces, the engineers' mission was to clear the beach of the 
obstructions that had been set by the enemy. Under the kind of fire and 
fear that only combat veterans know, they struggled to make lanes for 
the landing ships and tanks that would ultimately claim a great victory 
for the Allies, and land the blow that historians say was fatal to 
Naziism.
  Private First Class Thomas Netti of Auburn was a troop truck driver 
with the 299th. Today he is one of the two chairmen who are scheduling 
special events for June 6, 1994. He is predictably proud of what he did 
for his country. Proud, too, that he survived--unlike many of his 
comrades--to experience the blossoming of our great Nation at the end 
of World War II. Prouder, still, to see his son grow to be a county 
legislator in Cayuga County, a lawmaker in the land of the free.
  First Lieutenant Emily L. Triggs of Baldwinsville cared for the 
wounded in London, where they had been carried from the fighting. 
Later, as a member of the Army Nurse Corps evacuation hospital, she 
experienced the worst of war in the ageless tradition of battlefield 
healers at the Battle of the Bulge.
  On this important celebration of democracy, I recognize these heroes 
as representatives of all the U.S. veterans of D-Day. The world owes 
them a great deal, not the least of which is the violent but 
necessarily memory of D-Day, when Americans bravely stormed a continent 
beset by a military grip it could not break on its own. We can also 
take advantage of this time to remember that had they not achieved this 
great victory, the world today would be a place uncomfortable for us 
who proclaim freedom as our sacred banner.

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