[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 67 (Wednesday, May 25, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: May 25, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                       ADDITIONAL VIEWS ON D-DAYS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from California, [Mr. Hunter], is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I wanted to take this opportunity, as I was 
listening to the gentleman from California, [Mr. Dornan], give us his 
very eloquent description of the battle that was waged for freedom in 
World War II, I just wanted to give Mr. Dornan a little more time to 
talk about that and to talk about it with him a little bit.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from California [Mr. Dornan].
  Mr. DORNAN. I thank my colleague from California.
  First of all, let me correct something. I went all the way through 
pilots training with a good friend named Helm, and I mispronounced 
Chris Heil's name previously and said ``Helm'' when we all know that we 
really came to enjoy and knew all of our hardworking recorders of 
official debate here and Chris Heil was one of those incredible young 
Army engineers who went in in the dead of night.
  Duncan, I am getting a wonderful opportunity to go with one of our 
retired 2-star generals in this House, the gentleman from Mississippi, 
``Sonny Montgomery, over to Normandy in a few days. We leave next 
Tuesday. We will spend some time in England visiting some of the 
airfields. I am going to take a side trip to go down to some of the 
beach areas where the landing barges left and spent a miserable day at 
sea, getting sick because the weather was so bad and the assault was 
delayed a day.

  Then we are going to go down to Anzio so we do not forget those 
Americans who broke out of that beachhead after 4 months and 3 days, 50 
years ago this very day. Then back onto England and over to France, 
spend 1 day on the Utah beaches, go into Ste. Mere Eglise, where one of 
our distinguished colleagues on the other side of the aisle, Sam 
Gibbons, bailed out in the dead of night with the 101st Airborne. The 
other division being the 82d. By the way, earlier I forgot to mention 
the great IV Division, the 4th Division that hit the beach at Omaha.
  I do not know what we can do in this House to keep this memory alive. 
Imagine you as a Vietnam vet, if we cannot take time out in this 
Chamber to recall the momentous events of D-Day, what is it going to be 
like 50 years after the Vietnam war? Will it be remembered at all?
  We passed the 75th anniversary of my dad's World War I without a 
whisper of a mention in this Chamber or over at the other body.
  Mr. HUNTER. If my friend will permit, let me say that things come 
back to us, such as the movie shown about Normandy over at the Space 
Museum a few days ago, that shock us back into a realization of this 
momentous event and what hung in the balance, the freedom of the world 
that hung in the balance, and what our relatives did and our friends 
and our neighbors.

                              {time}  2230

  A lot of people who got up on that stage, I thought it was good the 
other night when so many Members of Congress were called forth starting 
with Strom Thurmond and the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Gibbons] who 
jumped in with the 101st Airborne, and I think Strom was in a glider 
operation, if I am not mistaken, and I think Sam was in a paratroop 
outfit, obviously with the 101st. But I had an experience the other day 
that shocked me back to this realization:
  I go through the now and again our veterans hospital in San Diego 
County, and I go there, and a lot of the folks are World War II folks 
in that hospital right now who are bedridden, and I just have a 
standard line I give them. I tell them, ``Thanks for what you did for 
the country,'' and interestingly none of them have complaints about the 
hospital. They are all, to a man, modest and grateful for what this 
country has done for them.
  And I said, ``Thanks for what you have done for our country,'' to one 
veteran, a gentleman named Lou West who was in a wheelchair, and his 
answer to me was; he said, ``This country has done a lot more for me 
than I've done for it,'' and so I thought that was an interesting 
response.
  And I asked what he had done and experienced in World War II. He was 
a flight engineer on a B-17, and he was shot down in 1944. It was 
October 7 of 1944. And when he was shot down, one of his good buddies 
in the plane, Hubert Betterton, had a parachute on. He took his 
parachute off. Now this was after the plane had been hit and was going 
down. He took his parachute off, and gave it to Lou and said, ``Don't 
worry. I'll go back and get another one,'' and he went to the back, and 
apparently he got a chute, and he went out, too, and, when Lou went 
out, they were very low level at that point, and he hit the ground, and 
he was unconscious when he woke up. His friend, Hubert Betterton, was 
dead beside him. Hubert Betterton's chute had not opened. The chute 
that he gave Lou West had opened----
  Mr. DORNAN. Wow.
  Mr. HUNTER. Lou was staring into the face of two Germans who 
immediately captured him and took him P.O.W., and that was just a 
little bit of an illustration of what our forefathers did, what our 
relatives did, just really a few days ago in the context of our history 
to serve this country.
  Mr. DORNAN. Well, I was thinking of drawing some analogies, and I 
will have to submit it for the Record of the House. Some things do not 
change. If Hitler had bought time, he would have developed the V-2 
rocket more. We are still unprotected to this day, and we are still 
debating over bombers and transports today. These systems earlier 
turned the tide of war.
  Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I apologize for running out the gentleman's 
time.
  Mr. DORNAN. That is all right; it was the gentleman's time.

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