[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 76 (Thursday, June 16, 1994)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[Congressional Record: June 16, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]
FURTHER REMEMBRANCE OF THE VETERANS OF SOMALIA
______
HON. ROBERT K. DORNAN
of california
in the house of representatives
Wednesday, June 15, 1994
Mr. DORNAN. Mr. Speaker, I would like to include in the Record six
more stories on the brave United States fighting men who sacrificed
their lives in combat in Somalia.
[From the Army Times, May 30, 1994]
When the Bass Ran, It Was Time for Leave
Every May, Spec. Mark E. Gutting, 25, would try to schedule
his leave around the opening of bass season.
``To say he liked to fish is an understatement,'' says his
father, Eugene Gutting. Fishing is a Gutting family
enterprise, and Mark was an enthusiast. The family would take
off for Lake Mitchell in Cadillac, Mich., when Mark was home
on leave, says his mother, Barbara Gutting, herself an avid
fisherman.
The youngest of six children, Mark Gutting grew up in
Michigan with a love of the outdoors. ``He enjoyed just going
out and sitting in the woods,'' his mother recalls.
``Supposedly he liked hunting, although he never got
anything. I think he enjoyed the solitude as much as
anything.''
``He had a funnier side that we often saw,'' she says,
remembering, too, that Mark had a knack for lifting spirits
and making people laugh.
``He had a good sense of humor and a lot of feeling for
people,'' Eugene Gutting says. ``He was especially concerned
with helping new recruits.''
Mark Gutting studied economics and international business
at Central Michigan University before enlisting in the Army.
``He decided to go into law enforcement, and he thought going
into the Army would be good training and a stepping stone to
that,'' Eugene Gutting says.
As a military policeman, Mark Gutting served in Operation
Desert Storm and spent two years in Panama before being
assigned to Fort Riley, Kan., in June 1993. At Riley, he was
hoping the stateside assignment would mean regular hours and
time to go back to school. Instead, two months after going to
Riley, he went to Somalia with the 977th Military Police
Company.
There, on Aug. 9, he and three other soldiers died
patrolling Mogadishu when a remotely detonated bomb ripped
through their Humvee.
Mark Gutting was awarded the Purple Heart and a Bronze
Star, his father says. ``I thought the Army did a fine job
[handling his death],'' Eugene Gutting says. ``There is a
great deal of compassion there.'' Calls and letters from Mark
Gutting's friends who served with him in Panama and Somalia
have given the family a glimpse of their son they might not
otherwise have had.
____
He Had ``That Smile'' and a Drive To Help
``That smile'' is something people are apt to bring up when
they talk about Sgt. Cornell L. Houston.
It was his smile that his wife, Carmen, remembers about
their first encounter. She was walking down the street in her
hometown of Mobile, Ala., when a car stopped to give her a
ride. Inside was a girlfriend and a guy she didn't know. He
had a big smile on his face. It was Cornell Houston.
The Rev. Clate Borders of Thomas Memorial AME Zion Church
in Watertown, N.Y., remembers that smile, too.
``I'll never forget it. He had a gold tooth up front,''
Borders said.
Carmen Houston, 29, recalls her late husband's laugh. ``He
would tell a lot of jokes. He just had a way of making even
your worst day . . . better.''
In many ways, Cornell Houston, 31, was a typical soldier.
He missed his family; being away from them was hard, Carmen
Houston said. But in other ways, Cornell Houston stood out.
``He wanted to help everybody,'' Borders said. ``He liked to
help those who could not help themselves.''
He also had ``willingness to take hold of anything and get
it done,'' Borders recalled. The minister remembers
mentioning to Houston on one occasion that the outside of the
church needed to be cleaned. A short time later, Borders
said, the grounds had been cleaned. Houston had rounded up a
crew and took charge of getting the job done. ``He didn't
wait for things to get done,'' Borders said.
Borders also remembers Houston coming to him to talk about
joining the choir. ``I don't know how to sing, but I've
always wanted to do it, and I want to give it a try,''
Houston said.
Houston was so open and wanted so badly to learn that
Borders sent him to the choir director. ``I thought he did
OK,'' Borders said.
After arriving at Fort Drum, N.Y., Houston became a Mason
and was a board member of the Watertown church.
Houston was assigned to C Company, 41st Engineering
Battalion, at Fort Drum. He had arrived in Somalia in August
1993 on his second tour. He was wounded October 3, sustaining
chest injuries, and died October 6 in the Landstuhl Army
Regional Medical Center in Germany. Houston has been honored
posthumously with the Purple Heart medal and the Bronze Star
Medal with ``V'' device for valor.
Borders believes the best way to remember Cornell Houston
is for everyone to ``pick up his banner and go forward with
it into the community.''
Carmen Houston also wants people to remember Cornell
Houston for his caring side. ``It's like . . . ,'' her voice
trails off. ``I miss him so much.''
____
The Memories Include His Medal of Honor
MSgt. Gary I. Gordon was a smart kid, his teachers used to
say, but he spent entirely too much time doodling.
Tanks, battleships, helicopters, ``anything and everything
military-related,'' his mother, Betty Gordon, says from her
home in Lincoln, Maine. But even though his imagination often
drifted to things combative, his mother was surprised the day
her son, then 17, announced he had joined the Army.
Gary Gordon, 33, was one of 18 soldiers killed during the
Oct. 3, 1993, clash with Somali gunmen in Mogadishu, Somalia.
He is credited with saving the life of an injured pilot and
was to be awarded the Medal of Honor posthumously May 23.
His family remembers a quiet man with an artistic flair and
a desire to write books about children.
``He didn't talk much about his job, but I know he loved it
a lot. It was like the ultimate job to him, being in that
unit,'' his wife, Carmen, says of her husband's affiliation
with soldiers attached to U.S. Army Special Forces Command,
Fort Bragg, N.C.
``He didn't bring the military home though,'' she says.
``The Gary I saw was all about family . . . and his
children. He had these special times with Brittany and Ian,''
like on Sunday mornings when he would spread the Sunday
newspaper out on the kitchen table, she says.
Brittany, 3, ``always had to be a part of the newspaper
thing,'' say Carmen Gordon, 29. ``Gary would give her a sheet
of newspaper and pour a little bit of coffee into her sip
cup, and she'd sit there and mimic his every move, right down
to the elbows on the table.''
And there were the woodworking sessions with Ian, 6.
``When Gary made furniture, Ian was always out there right
by his side. Gary would give him some wood scraps, a hammer
and a big thing of Elmer's glue, and there they were, the
both of them covered in saw dust,'' Carmen Gordon says.
After his death, Carmen Gordon went through his personal
items and came across a letter her husband had written nearly
five years before while in a hangar in Panama during
Operation Just Cause.
``It was filled with dreams of Ian growing up strong and of
having grandchildren on his knee, but his last words were:
`In case something should happen to me, be strong, never give
up, and always look inside yourself for strength.'
``Knowing that he felt I was strong makes me want to carry
on.''
____
Once Committed, He Didn't Waiver
Sgt. James Casey Joyce was a man who could be counted on
once he had committed himself to a project.
Speaking of her son's leadership qualities, his mother,
Gail Joyce, remembers ``his ability to focus on something and
to be completely committed to a cause or an idea; and once he
made that commitment, he never wavered.''
Nowhere was this trait more apparent than in his military
career. After spending three years in two different colleges,
changing his major a couple of times in the process, Casey
Joyce enlisted in the Army in November 1990.
``He wanted to go into the Army to get some focus and some
maturity,'' says his father, retired Lt. Col. Larry Joyce.
His father's military background ``absolutely'' influenced
Casey Joyce's decision to enlist, says Larry Joyce. ``He
wanted to prove something to himself and to me.''
Determined to excel, Casey Joyce ``chose probably the most
difficult and challenging assignment he could,'' says Larry
Joyce. He volunteered for service in the 75th Ranger
Regiment, Fort Benning, Ga. ``I don't think I could have done
what he did,'' the father said during his eulogy at the
October 9 memorial service in Casey Joyce's native Plano,
Texas.
The extent to which Casey Joyce steeped himself in the
values of the Ranger creed can be measured by the awards and
decorations he earned in less than three years of service.
These included his airborne wings, the Ranger tab, the
Pathfinder badge and the Meritorious Service Medal. They are
capped by the Bronze Star for valor he was awarded
posthumously for his actions on the night of October 3, when
he died fighting Somalia guerrillas in the back streets of
Mogadishu.
On at least two occasions, Casey Joyce also displayed an
uncanny ability to predict the future. An avid Dallas Cowboys
fan since boyhood, he had stood by his team during the lean
years of the late 1980s. Then, while on leave in the summer
of 1992, he went to the team's summer camp in Austin. ``He
predicted they were going to win the Super Bowl long before
anyone else did,'' says Gail Joyce.
He had made a similarly accurate prediction four years
earlier while he was walking through a mall in Plano and saw
DeAnna Gray, then a high school senior, standing behind a
counter. ``He said to his friend, `I'm going to marry that
girl,''' says DeAnna Joyce. Roughly 2\1/2\ years later, he
did exactly that, in the same Plano church in which his
memorial service was held.
Seven months after Casey Joyce's death, his widow's voice
still chokes with emotion as she remembers talking to him by
telephone the night before his death. ``We were planning a
trip--he asked me if New Orleans was OK,'' she said.
Hours later, a Somali sniper's bullet killed Casey Joyce
and cost his family its most dynamic member. ``He was the
spice in our life,'' says his mother.
____
The Road Wasn't Easy, But He'd Make it Better
Cpl. Richard W. Kowalewski Jr. didn't have an easy road,
but he had plans to make his life better.
He bounced among several high schools as his parents moved,
then broke up. He lived with his mother in Texas, with his
father in Alabama, then with his grandparents in
Pennsylvania. But he kept his sights on his future. Despite
the school changes, he stayed enrolled in Junior ROTC. An
avid chess player, he knew to plan his next several moves:
After high school, he was going to join the Army, earn some
money for college, get a degree in electrical engineering,
and marry his girlfriend.
``He kind of knew we didn't have the finances to help him
through college,'' says Richard Kowalewski Sr. ``It was just
something he had all lined up, even before he graduated from
high school, that he was going to . . . go to the service,
and then he could get his schooling.''
The younger Kowalewski completed basic training in June
1992. He was assigned to the 3d Battalion, 75th Ranger
Regiment, which deployed to Somalia in August 1993. Thoughts
of his future shifted to focusing on a very tense present.
``War is very sad and kills everyone in some way,'' he wrote
to Donna Yarish, his fiancee, one week before his death at
age 20 in the October 3-4 firefight.
He had been planning to come home Thanksgiving, pick up his
fiancee in Pennsylvania and introduce her to his family. By
the time Thanksgiving arrived, the elder Kowalewski had
attended his son's funeral at Arlington National Cemetery,
Va., and a memorial service for the slain Rangers at Fort
Benning, Ga.
Richard Kowalewski Jr. was among the Rangers killed while
their convoy, under heavy fire, snaked through Mogadishu side
streets, trying to rescue U.S. soldiers in a downed
helicopter. He was awarded the Bronze Star Medal for valor.
Richard Kowalewski Sr. doesn't feel that sacrifice was
repaid. He says for his son's funeral, the Army offered plane
tickets and hotel rooms--for him and for his ex-wife. The
senior Kowalewski was unable to use the plane ticket because
he wanted the entire family to go together. He, his second
wife, another son living with them and the grandparents who
saw that Richard Jr. completed high school, paid their own
way to Washington, then shared a single hotel room, the elder
Kowalewski says.
``They wanted to do for the immediate family--the mother
and the father--and that was it,'' he says.
But Army officials say they are limited by law in paying
for travel expenses to funerals. The service can pay for
travel for a spouse and children, and for parents only if the
soldier was not married or childless.
``It wasn't that the Army didn't want to help [the
Kowalewskis]; it couldn't,'' says Harry Campbell, an Army
memorial affairs official.
But when the family attended a memorial service at Fort
Benning, Ga., the Rangers provided forms for families to list
travel expenses for reimbursement.
``When they send us a check, we'll just cash it and send
another check back as a donation to the Rangers,'' Richard
Kowalewski Sr. says, ``. . . The government, I felt, should
have paid for it.''
____
He Had Worried About the Futility of Dying There
It had become a tradition in a family that had sent sons
off to war: After Sgt. Dominick M. Pilla, 21, deployed to
Somalia with his Ranger company in August 1993, the family
put together a package of pepperoni sticks and balls of
provolone cheese. Dominick's father, Benjamin Pilla, had
gotten such a package when he was serving in Vietnam. Frank
Pilla, Dominick's brother, had gotten one while off the coast
of Kuwait during the Persian Gulf War.
Dominick Pilla's package was returned unopened to his
parents' home in Vineland N.J. He had been killed before it
reached him.
Dominick Pilla had heard his father's war stories and had
seen the pictures he'd brought home from Vietnam.
``I told him how people get killed and get wounded, lose
arms or legs,'' says his father. ``It's not all glory. He
knew that.''
Regardless, Dominick Pilla decided as an adolescent that he
wanted to join the Army and be a Ranger. He enlisted in the
Delayed Entry Program while in high school, then took up a
rigorous exercise and body-building program to prepare for
Ranger training.
Benjamin Pilla and his wife, Diane, say Dominick Pilla had
the cockiness of a quick study who excelled at his interests.
For example, he liked riding Benjamin Pilla's 1,400cc Harley
Davidson motorcycle, among the biggest made. ``He took his
motorcycle test on it and passed,'' Benjamin Pilla says.
``Most guys fail the first time on the big bike. He was a
natural.''
The bike sat for months after October 3. ``I couldn't ride
that thing all winter,'' Benjamin Pilla says. ``I just let it
sit there because it reminded me of him too much. . . . The
last letter I got from him from Somalia, he said when he
comes back, he was going to buy one so we could go riding
together.''
Dominick Pilla and his father had a long talk in June 1993,
during Dominick's last leave before deploying to Somalia.
``He said, `I realize what we do, I could get killed or
wounded. I just hope it's not Somalia or Bosnia.' He knew the
futility of it,'' says Benjamin Pilla.
Dominick Pilla was with a convoy taking an injured soldier
from the October 3 firefight to be treated. He was killed
when the U.S. Humvees were ambushed. Dominick Pilla was
posthumously awarded the Bronze Star Medal for valor.
``He was always a good, decent kid,'' says Benjamin Pilla.
``Never in trouble, had good respect for law and for
authority. Never gave me any trouble at all.
``That's the kind that die, unfortunately.''
____________________