[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 72 (Friday, June 10, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: June 10, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                         THE BATTLE OF NORMANDY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from California [Mr. Dornan] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DORNAN. Mr. Speaker, before I begin my remarks on what I will 
call the Battle of Normandy, not just D-day which was only the first 
day, before the pages leave the floor, I would also want to add to the 
remarks of my colleagues how much we have enjoyed this class of pages. 
It almost seems like they just get better with each passing year, which 
is almost impossible because the pages when I was first here in 1977 
when I represented a totally different district, I met some fine young 
men and women that are now already through law school, out practicing, 
practicing medicine, some of them have already attained the rank of 
captain, men and women in our military. You tend to think except when 
you run to catch a bus that you are ageless once you hit that plateau 
of about 25 and when you meet somebody, you say, ``Don't I know you?''
  ``Yes, I was your intern in 1978 or 1979.''
  Mr. Speaker, I do not know what it is like for our Members who have 
been here for 52 years like our distinguished colleague, the gentleman 
from Mississippi [Mr. Whitten], but you certainly feel a sense of the 
passing of time when you meet pages who are out there in the world. I 
have yet to meet the first page who has attained State office, although 
I understand it has happened, from those that I met here as a serving 
Member, and I look forward to the day when I come back and I see one of 
you sitting here in the chairs as a Member of Congress and I am back 
here for a former members day.
  If you are not rushing off to something, let me teach you a little 
something about the history of your country here on the Battle of 
Normandy, and I appreciate some of you pages remaining.
  Mr. Speaker, 13 days ago I took the well to talk about the coming 
50th anniversary of D-day and I remarked with some sadness that there 
were no celebrations on this floor with, not my participation, but the 
senior Members like the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Gibbons], the 
Senator from South Carolina [Mr. Thurmond], the gentleman from Alabama 
[Mr. Bevill], all of them officers, many Members here who were enlisted 
men in various parts of the world in World War II. On the 60th 
anniversary, probably they will have all retired by then, with the 
exception of one or two, and certainly by the 75th anniversary, none of 
them will be here.
  There was no memorial service on this House floor or I understand in 
the other body, in the Senate, and it is a tragedy. I spent 7 days over 
there, I have mixed feelings about whether it was a celebration, which 
it certainly was not, a memorial, a celebration for victory, but a 
memory for those young men who gave everything.
  Mr. Speaker, in the remaining 3 or 4 minutes here, I can only tell my 
colleagues that I would like to come back for an hour next week and 
give just a stream of consciousness on some of the key memories and 
some of the key conversations I had with vets.
  I was there outside of Sur-Mer-Eglese when 41 veterans, all 50 years 
on top of whatever their age was when they bailed out, the youngest was 
an 18-year-old, so he was 68 when he bailed out again, of a C-47 and 
another adjoining smaller Canadian twin Otter, the oldest had been a 
33-year-old officer when he jumped out, so he was 83 years of age when 
I watched him parachute out in those same fields on the afternoon of 
June 5 where he had been flying that night of June 5th 50 years ago to 
bail out just after 1 o'clock in the morning.

  It was incredible to go up and shake the hands of these 41 veterans 
who had for the short moment, one of them suffering a severe back 
injury doing it, recaptured their youth.
  At the end of the week, I broke away from the codel and went out into 
Colleville-Sur-Mer, the cemetery, which is 172 acres of American 
territory, given to us by the French Government forever. I was looking 
for the graves of the 33 pairs of brothers who are buried side by side, 
particularly for the graves of the sons of Theodore Roosevelt, our 
President in 1901 through 1908. I finally found the Roosevelt brothers' 
graves, looking for the gilded lettering on Teddy Roosevelt, Jr. 
because he received the Medal of Honor as the highest ranking officer 
on the Utah Beach, a brigadier general. He died D-day plus 36 days in 
the chow line with his men, without knowing he was going to get the 
Medal of Honor. He died of a heart attack from the stress of 36 days of 
combat.
  He was the one who said on the beach, ``Let the war begin here, we 
are going through that small V-shaped gap in the sand dunes.''
  Mr. Speaker, when I looked at his grave, there were three wreaths of 
flowers around it given by the Fourth Division veterans that had come 
back, and I looked at the grave of his younger brother, Quinton, who 
had died 26 years earlier in his fighter plane over the trenches of 
France. My dad, Harry Joseph Dornan, was in those trenches as a 
combatant captain and officer, and he crashed near our trenches, so 
they retrieved his body. He died on Bastille Day, which is the Fourth 
of July for France, that is July 14th, their Freedom Day, their 
national celebration, trying to liberate or keep France from being 
overrun, he died on Bastille Day. His older brother, Teddy Roosevelt, 
Jr., 26 years later, short 2 days, July 12, he died this time 
liberating all of France. I thought of the words that a three-star 
general, Vernon Walters, our former Ambassador to Berlin, told me not a 
half hour before in the presence of another Medal of Honor winner, Adm. 
John Bulkeley, who took MacArthur off Corregidor. I was talking to 
Bulkeley about his job after the Solomon islands, commanding our PT 
boats off the beaches of Sicily in July 1943, a few months later off 
the beaches of Salerno, Italy, again Anzio, and brought up to command 
67 PT boats off the coast of Normandy.
  Keep in mind here John F. Kennedy lost his PT boat on his first 
mission, not his fault, but his first mission. Here was Bulkeley, 
hundreds of combat missions and PT boats, and in his esteemed presence 
General Walters tells me the following story:
  When former President Roosevelt was told one of his young boys, 
Quinton, had died for his country and for France, Teddy Roosevelt 
looked down, his eyes filled up with tears, and he looked up and said, 
``When you have raised your sons to be eagles, you can't expect them to 
be doves.''
  The word ``dove'' had as much resonance then as I guess it did during 
the Vietnam war when some people let high school graduates go in their 
place so they could continue their higher education in a foreign land 
demonstrating against their country's objectives to keep half of 
Vietnam free and to prevent the killing fields and give aid and comfort 
to a vicious Communist worldwide effort to crush liberte, equalite, 
fraternite.

                              {time}  1530

  Mr. Speaker, I will be back to tell you about the other 32 pairs of 
brothers and the colonel father and his lieutenant son who died in the 
battle for Normandy which was raging heavily today outside the little 
town of Carentan 50 years ago.

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