[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 45 (Friday, March 10, 1995)]
[House]
[Pages H3034-H3041]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
THE GREATEST BATTLE OF WORLD WAR II
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 4, 1995, the gentleman from California [Mr. Dornan] is
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
Mr. DORNAN. Mr. Speaker, as I said a few moments ago in my 1-minute
speech, I would be spending the better part of this next hour on
America's most costly battle, the one that Winston Churchill said was
the greatest battle in American history, the campaign in the Ardennes
Forest of Europe. Churchill was correct. If we go by ``killed in action
and wounded in action,'' his words were true. His exact words were,
``This is undoubtedly the greatest battle of the war, and will, I
believe, be regarded as an ever famous American victory.''
Before I do that, it is my desire, Mr. Speaker, to read slowly an
article from the Washington Post on Wednesday that I believe is the
great moral battle of our time. The unending death total of almost
4,500 Americans in their mother's wombs every single day. Still, a
million and a half abortions every year. It is a death toll that is way
past 30 million just since the Roe versus Wade decision, one of the
most evil decisions by a court in all of recorded history, a decision
based on a total lie.
Norma McCovey, who was named Jane Roe as her nom de guerre, her war
title, war against the preborn, never did have an abortion. She tried
to kill all three of her daughters that are still estranged from her.
They are all in their middle twenties to early thirties now, and they
are all saying when their mother is willing to apologize for having
tried to kill them then they will reconcile with her.
She is on the road, not a very high IQ lady, on the road for Planned
Parenthood and NARAL and other ferociously pro-abortion groups. And she
is a sad figure, because she never was raped. And the whole case in
Texas by a very poorly prepared attorney general of Texas was based on
a lie. She never was raped, I repeat, never did abort one of her three
pregnancies. The three daughters live to this day. And on that lie, we
did something as loathsome as keeping about four million Americans
enslaved, Americans of African heritage, right up through the bloodiest
conflict that America has ever known, 618,000 dead from all the
American States on both sides, in a Nation that, including the non-free
Americans, was only about 37 or 38 million people. And we killed off in
their child bearing years through disease and combat, combat far less
than those that died of diseases, 618,000 Americans. And here we are
doubling that total every year with abortion alone.
{time} 1330
This article is by a friend of mine who is an excellent actor. You
can see him doing many commercials in any given year. He is a good
character actor, but beyond that he teaches law at Pepperdine and he is
an excellent philosopher, an observant individual, Benjamin J. Stein.
And here is what he writes in Wednesday's Washington Post, one of
America's three big liberal papers of record. The title of Ben's
article is ``Deep Sixed by the GOP.''
```A bureaucrat is a Democrat who has a job that a Republican wants.'
So said Eleanor Roosevelt in 1946 when she was helping to campaign
against the Republican tide in Congress. It didn't help, but it made a
valid point. There's no particular pride in coining phrases and slogans
and in posturing after moral superiority if all you really want is a
job,'' that someone else has, ``and the pose of moral superiority is
your pitch.''
``This comes to mind because of a recent spate of back pedaling among
Republicans about the right-to-life issue. From what I hear,'' says Ben
Stein, ``it's coming from across the board, in Congress and
elsewhere,'' across our land, ``and there is not a
single GOP Presidential hopeful at this point who is in favor of a
right-to-life amendment to the Constitution or of repealing Roe versus
Wade in any way.''
I might put in an important footnote at that point, Mr. Speaker. This
Member, who aspires to the greatest office in this land or any other, I
not only have a right-to-life amendment, and have had in every one of
nine Congresses that I have been here, but I have always been for
repealing Roe versus Wade, a repeal of the Supreme Court decision of
infamous and heinous ill repute that was based on a lie.
And the lawyer, Sarah Weddington of Texas, knew it was a lie and told
her client Norma McCovey, Jane Roe, to continue lying. She wasn't raped
and has never been subjected to an abortion.
Back to Ben Stein. Now to some of us, abortion is the preeminent
moral issue of the century. It's not a medical
[[Page H3035]] procedure of moral neutrality. It's not a sad duty that
conflicted mothers sometimes have to do. It's the immoral taking of a
life, not very different from homicide.
``Since it's done by doctors and by mothers, it's particularly
hypocritical since it's the taking of totally helpless life, it's the
breaking of the most sacred trust imaginable--the implicit pledge by
parents to take care of their children, or at least not to murder them.
``Stopping this riot of immorality is not just another issue like how
many pages of regulations there should be on handling chicken by-
products. It's not an issue about which learned people differ--but none
considers either position immoral--like the balanced budget amendment.
It's the bedrock test for many of us of whether we can consider
ourselves a moral people. It's as vital for our time as abolitionism
was for the America of a century and a half ago. From it flow all other
considerations of how much importance we place on human life.
``Obviously, not everyone agrees with us about this issue. There are
some politicians, like Barbara Boxer and Diane Feinstein,'' both of
California, ``who have always opposed right to life and tried to make
the case for abortion. That's not fine, but at least it's
understandable. There is some consistency there, and although it's
consistency for a wicked principle, it's understandable.
``What's more troublesome right now is this screaming fact: The
Republicans ran under the right-to-life banner. They gave money to
right-to-life to turn out the pro-life vote. They got a stunningly high
percentage of the right-to-life vote.''
I might add another footnote here. Given the preponderance of people
of my heritage in the other party, and a similar heritage to an Irish
heritage, that of Italian-American ancestry, Polish-American ancestry,
Lithuanian-American ancestry, French-American ancestry, there is a
strong representation still of what we loosely call in politics, blue
collar or Reagan Democrats in the other party. And they came over to
the Republican vote on November 8, 1994, in more massive numbers than
they ever had before, even in larger numbers than they did to elect
Ronald Reagan in 1980 and 1984.
So it is fair to say we got a stunningly high percentage of the
right-to-life vote, particularly thanks to the former Governor of
Pennsylvania, Robert Casey, a large number of Democrat right-to-life
voters.
``It's not an exaggeration to say the right-to-life vote put the
Republicans in power in Congress,'' in this 104th Congress.
``Seemingly, now that the GOP is in the jobs that the Democrats had,
the right-to-life voters can be safely cast aside. (`Where else do they
have to go?' as a Republican strategist here said to me. `We aren't
going to lose them to Hillary Clinton').
``There will be some minimal bows to not using taxpayer money to pay
for abortions, but the Federal Government will not use its power to
hinder privately paid abortions. (Even though the Federal Government
pokes its snout into the nongovernment sector minute by minute, person-
by-person all across America.)
``The notion here, as I,'' Ben Stein, ``keep reading, is that
abortion is a divisive issue, the kind of issue that gets people angry,
that splits the party and that loses elections if it's pressed.
``Or, to put it another way, maybe abortion is the kind of issue that
prevents a Republican from getting a job that a Democrat has.'' There
is that Eleanor Roosevelt quote again. ``But wait a minute: If it's
true that the GOP ran on a pose of moral superiority, got elected on
that pose and is now going to deep six the issue it posed on so as to
go on to further electoral triumphs, don't we have a word for that?
Isn't the word hypocrisy. Isn't it the most painful kind of
hypocrisy--hypocrisy about a moral issue that keeps people up at night,
that makes people go to jail for what they believe?
And I know my friend Ben is speaking here of people who demonstrate
peacefully or at least nonviolently; not the two assassins or the
midnight cowardly bomber. He is speaking about nuns and priests and
ministers and rabbis and humble mothers and young kids who put it on
the line before we tried to restrict the peaceful right to assemble or
the freedom of speech of this one--this one human and civil rights
movement in the 216-year history of our country.
Only the pro-life movement is subjected to this bullying that used to
go on in this Chamber and that I do believe came to a sreeching halt
November 8.
Back to Ben Stein's closing two paragraphs: ``Somehow, I don't think
that all of the cutting of the budget, reduction of taxes and building
up of the military will wipe away the stain. The GOP has seemingly just
used the most morally sensitive issue of the century as a ploy to get
votes. When it looks as if the issue might lose an election, even if
the pledges were unequivocal, the issue and the faithful get dumped.
It's frighteningly cynical.
``But now we know. Get the votes and run. A bureaucrat is a Democrat
who has a job that a Republican wants. That, apparently, is the bottom
line.''
Signature by Benjamin J. Stein, a writer and actor in Los Angeles, a
teacher of law at Pepperdine University.
Well, I would hope that my party will show more courage and more
principle than what Mr. Stein suspects here, Mr. Speaker. And after we
have our first pro-life debate and our pro-life vote, after the largest
number of Roman Catholics to ever serve in this body waive the
scriptural admonition, what does it profit a person to gain the whole
world and lose their immortal soul, that some Roman Catholics who
regularly vote for abortion here, that they will come home to their
Christian faith and they will realize that they can be in the majority
now. An easy call. That they can just give us a supermajority on
stopping this unbelievable death toll of abortion in our fair,
beautiful land, and that they will have a chance to reconcile
themselves with their faith. That they no longer have to posture that
they know more than Mother Teresa, more than the Pope in Rome, more
than every bishop in this country--no matter how flaky they are on
liberalism or how flaky they are on homosexuality--every bishop in this
country and most protestant bishops, all Jewish rabbis of orthodox
faith closest to the land of the book that we all call the holy land,
that maybe there will be a reconciliation and a coming home before that
first vote before people lock themselves into what is, to quote Ben, a
screaming denial of decency and a denial of their faith. Let's see what
happens in the 104th Congress.
Now, I have been joined by a friend of mine who can almost ask me
anything. But I was now about to spend the rest of this hour on the
Battle of the Bulge. This man has probably seen more combat, given the
retirement rate, than anybody in this Chamber; has shot down five of
the enemy's best MIG fighters and was shot down himself in the process
and plucked out of the sea by rescue forces before the enemy had a
chance to torture him. And this is the kind of guy I think they would
have preferred to torture to death, rather than let him come home and
run for Congress, Duke Cunningham.
And my dear colleague, I see a note from you that you want to take
from my ration on the Battle of the Bulge 5 minutes for what subject?
Mr. CUNNINGHAM. Children's Nutrition Program.
Mr. DORNAN. Children alive today who are alive because of those
heroes at the Battle of the Bulge and the drive across the Rhine which
started 50 years ago on the 7th of March, a few days ago.
I was also going to mention that this is day 20 of the 36 days of our
Marine Corps taking their worst casualties ever, almost 6,800 others
dying on the island of Iwo Jima. They had reached the north shore
yesterday and they still had 16 vicious days to go.
I will tell you what I will do. Children's nutrition is so important,
and you are an expert, let me set the scene for my words on the Battle
of the Bulge by telling everybody what happened 50 years ago today,
Duke, and then I will give you those 5 minutes carved right out of the
middle of what I hope is commanding the attention of people.
Duke, what I said in the 1-minute, and I meant to say at the
beginning of this, I am begging anybody listening to
[[Page H3036]] the sound of my voice and to this distinguished Chamber
and we have got--I can't identify them by name, but we have about, look
at that, 250, make 300 young Americans, generation-X folks chasing the
baby-boomers into what I hope will be a successful life for every one
of them.
I am begging them, anybody listening, to call a friend, a friend that
may be watching the O.J. Simpson trial--an athletic hero gone sour, but
never was asked to lay his life on the line for his country, as you
were and as I offered to do in peacetime as a combat-ready, trained
fighter pilot.
Call a friend, tell them to take a break from the O.J. Simpson trial.
Turn on C-SPAN and watch what you have to say on child nutrition and
watch what I have to say about the heroes of Iwo Jima, the crossing of
the Rhine, and the ones that I just didn't get an opportunity to talk
about with our reorganization and rebirth of the American revolution
here the last couple of months, what I learned in Europe in December
last, this last Christmas week, about the Battle of the Bulge.
But let me set the scene and then I will yield to you, Mr.
Cunningham. March 10, 1945, 50 years ago today--I am going to set the
scene:
I have here the words of the 40th President of the United States,
Ronald Reagan. And this is why I am doing this. Ronald Reagan, in his
goodbye speech as President of the United States, 8 wonderful years, 9
days before George Bush was sworn in as our 41st President, President
Reagan on all three major networks and CNN said goodbye to his fellow
countrymen.
It is a beautiful speech, truly beautiful. I have put it into the
Record several times. But at the end of his speech, in the last few
paragraphs, he asked us to reflect upon the importance of the history
of our great and fair land.
He said, and these are his exact words: ``We've got to teach history
based not on what's in fashion, but on what's important--why the
Pilgrims came here, who Jimmy Doolittle was, and what those 30 seconds
over Tokyo meant. You know, 4 years ago, on the 40th anniversary of D-
day,'' this is the 51st anniversary coming up, ``I read a letter from a
young women writing to her late father, who'd fought on Omaha Beach.
Her name was Lisa Zanatta Henn, and she said, `We will always remember,
we will never forget what the boys of Normandy did.'''
President Reagan goes on to talk about helping her keep her word and
he closes his goodbye to the country this way. ``Let me offer lesson
number one about America: All great change in America begins at the
dinner table. So, tomorrow night in the kitchen I hope the talking
begins. And children, if your parents haven't been teaching you what it
means to be an American, let 'em know and nail 'em on it. That would be
a very American thing to do.''
He goes on to talk about what he meant about ``a shining city upon a
hill,'' talks about the early Pilgrims, early freedom men, referring
back to the stirring moments in his early speech where he recounted a
favorite story of his of Vietnamese boat people seeking freedom, people
we had betrayed and left behind in Vietnam to the cruel tortures and
executions of their Communist masters from Hanoi, the conquerers who
still rule there.
And this young Vietnamese boy, now an American citizen somewhere in
the country, maybe listening to my voice right this afternoon, he
yelled up at one of our rescue ships, ``Hello,'' to this young sailor,
``hello, freedom man.''
So President Reagan is referring back to his beautiful freedom man
story and he talks about what his vision of an American city on a hill
is. And then he says about himself, ``We've done our part. And as I
walk off into the city streets, a final word to the men and women of
the Reagan revolution, the men and women across America who for 8 years
did the work that brought America back. My friends: We did it. We
weren't just marking time. We made a difference. We made the cities
stronger, we made the city freer, and we left her in good hands. All in
all, not bad, not bad at all.
``And so goodbye, God bless you and God bless the United States of
America.''
That was 9:02 p.m. from the Oval Office, January 11, 1989. Remember
those words: Children, if your parents haven't been teaching you what
if means to be an American, let 'em know. Nail 'em on it. That would be
a very American thing to do at your kitchen table.
Now, set the scene. March 10, 50 years ago. The allies complete the
Rhineland campaign, on the west side of Europe's greatest river, the
Rhine. The American 1st Army, 3rd Army, 9th Army, and the Canadian 1st
Army are lined up across a 140-mile stretch of the Rhine.
Within a few days from now, General Patton is across the Rhine. A few
more days after that, at the end of March, General Alexander Patch is
across the Rhine. But at this moment, 50 years ago, it was day 3 of the
Remagen bridgehead crossing at the Ludendorf Bridge. A 2-month
offensive leading up to this crossing of the Rhine had cost us 63,000
Allied casualties.
Bob Michel was here yesterday, our former minority leader, I said,
Bob, 50 years ago today, March 9, where were you? He stopped and said,
``In the hospital recovering from my wounds of a few weeks ago.'' And
he said, ``Back getting ready to go back into combat.''
But the Germans, a Christian nation composed of basically Roman
Catholics and Lutherans, how did they ever get these Lutheran and
Catholic kids to run those concentration camps or to murder our
prisoners at Malmedy, the sacred ground that I walked across last
Christmas week?
The Germans have lost 250,000, including 150,000 very eager-to-
surrender young POW's and older men of the Home Guard. American combat
engineers have now completed two bridges across the Rhine next to the
shakey Remagen Bridge, which was to fall in a few days killing 14 of
our heroic engineers trying to hold on to the railroad bridge while we
build the two-pontoon bridge alongside.
The 9th ``Varsity'' Division, the 78th ``Lighting'' Division, the
99th ``Checkerboard'' Division have all joined the 9th ``Phantom''
Armor Division to expand the 1st Army's east bank foothold across the
Rhine in Germany proper.
The Germans are trying to corral the bridgehead with 12 divisions--we
are still badly outnumbered--including two of the infamous Panzer
divisions. Hitler has named Kesseling, a professional field marshal, to
replace Gerd von Rundstedt who he fired 3 days ago once we got across
the river.
I already mentioned what was happening in Iwo Jima. General McArthur
with the United States Army in the southern Philippines has the 41st
``Sunset'' Division establishing a beachhead on Mindanao's Zamboanga
Peninsula; 150,000 Filipinos were slaughtered. Manila is just rubble
and the Japanese commander, Hama, will be executed after the war
because this slaughter took place under him.
That is setting the scene for me to go back to the veterans of the
Rhineland campaign and those that crossed the Rhine that earned their
place in American history in terrible snowstorms 50 years ago last
December and this January at the Battle of the Bulge, which I will do
after my friend Duke Cunningham, brings us up to to date and informs us
what is truly taking place about children's nutrition.
It is all yours, Mr. Cunningham.
children's Nutrition Programs
Mr. CUNNINGHAM. Mr. Speaker, first of all, I really appreciate my
friend from California, Bob Dornan, yielding the time. I tried to make
it over for the 5 minutes and he has been gracious enough to extend me
the privilege to interrupt his special order.
And I first would like to say it is always good to be back with Tiger
Flight. As always Bob Dornan has more knowledge on military history
than the Smithsonian Museum has. And if you notice, he does not do it
from paperwork; he does it from memory. And, Bob, I would like to
especially thank you.
You know, I do not know how to counter untruths that are spoken on
this House floor, and I think one of the most frustrating thing for
Members is to hear the daily rhetoric that goes on on this House floor
that are untruths, that are not the truth. And I think who we hurt the
most and how many Members on the other side hurt the most are our pages
and our youngsters and the people that watch.
[[Page H3037]] I listened and talked to some of the Democratic pages
and also to the Republican pages and some of them came back to me and
said, Congressman Cunningham, we know that they are saying children's
nutrition, cutting children's nutrition programs is not right. We are
Democrats but we were brought up not to tell untruths. And I do not
know why our side of the aisle is doing it, but what can you do to show
them the actual facts and that is why I have come today.
I am the chairman of the subcommittee that went over and looked at
children's nutrition programs. I met with the Speaker, with the
Republican Governors, and they said there are 366 welfare programs in
existence. All 366 of those welfare programs have personnel, they have
facilities, they have paperwork requirements. They have reporting data
that school teachers and principals and superintendents have to deal
with every day, a stack this high.
And they all intertwine and they cover different
folks. But yet we have many people applying for various ones of the
366 and we cannot track who they are. The system has gone amuck. And
just take a look at our welfare system today.
It is a disaster and it needs to be fixed. And this is a choice of
allowing our children in the future to maintain in their lifetime and
have a debt ceiling on their lives of $180,000 that they would pay in
taxes just for the interest on the debt.
Now, the question is, are we doing that on the backs of the children?
Are we taking food out of children's mouths? The answer is, of course
not.
In the program what I did is took a look, and under H.R. 4, the plan
was to take all of the block grants and put them in the welfare block
grant. After consultations with my own school districts in San Diego,
consultation with different groups that came in and talked to me in the
food services, I determined, as well as Chairman Goodling, that if we
did that we would actually hurt children's nutrition programs. So being
the chairman of the committee, I personally removed the child breakfast
and the child lunch programs from the overall welfare block grant. I
separated them.
There is another program that works very, very well to help, and you
can tie an economic model on both of these programs. And that is the
Women, Infants, and Children's Program, called WIC. They work very
well. And in this body, both Republicans and Democrats, on a bipartisan
basis, have supported both the school-based and the family-based
program of WIC. And if we would have put them into that block grant, it
would have damaged both of them.
I hear time after time after time again from the other side of the
aisle that we are cutting those programs. Well, Mr. Speaker, I would
like to speak to that very issue. Because instead of cutting the
program, I protected them. I separated them in a block grant instead of
cutting them.
There were many people that came back to this Congress, especially
our freshmen, and said, We came back to cut, we want to cut down and we
want to work on the deficit, and we want to cut the program. And they
wanted not to go to zero growth, but to actually cut into it by 5
percent.
I went to Chairman Goodling, and I said, Mr. Chairman, if that
feeling prevails, I will resign my chairmanship of early childhood
education. Because if we do that, again, we will damage children's
nutrition programs. It meant that much to protect programs that work.
Are we cutting? Take a look at the WIC Program itself. This is what
we, Mr. Speaker, in 1995, this year, we spent $3.47 billion on the
Women, Infants, and Children's Program. In the year 2000, we spend
$4.246 billion. And if you look at next year, from $3.4 we go to $3.7
billion. That is the Women, Infants, and Children's Program.
If you take a look at the school-based program, this year we spent
$4.5 billion on our children and our School Lunch Programs. Next year,
we spend $4.7 billion. And every year we increase it by more than $200
million a year. Instead of cutting it, I arranged to add dollars in
that every single year and protect those programs.
{time} 1400
What about the protection of them? Each State is different. What
Tommy Thomson's requirements are in Wisconsin may be different from
what Governor Wilson's requirements are in California or Christy
Whitman's requirements are in New Jersey. So we gave the Governors the
remaining 20 percent.
I mandated that 80 percent of the money in this block grant goes to
WIC. That 80 percent is represented in this figure. It is more than we
currently spend every year in WIC.
In the lunch program, I mandated that 80 percent of the funds go to
those children that need it most, those below 185 percent poverty
level, the kids that cannot get a school meal because their parents or
their economic situation would keep that child from eating. That child,
if they don't eat, they are not going to learn, and those are the
children we found are going to end up on the economy on welfare or in
low-paying jobs. So there is an economic model to it.
Now, in that 80 percent, there is 20 percent left over. It doesn't
take a mathematical genius to figure that out. The Governor in each of
those States has the authority to take that remaining 20 percent and
if, in their State, they need it because of maybe a recession, whatever
it is, and put more money into the School Breakfast and School Lunch
Program, they can. If they need it to go in the WIC, in that separate
block grant, they can take the 20 percent out that have block grant and
include it there.
I yield back.
Mr. DORNAN. This is just the way you described it, trying to set the
record straight. Tonight there is a dinner, a Lincoln dinner in the
county of Washington in Arkansas, and they asked me to tape an
introduction to the dinner for them because they knew I couldn't get
down there by tonight because of votes today.
And I went to Arkansas 2 weeks ago, great American State, 24 Medal of
Honor winners and hardly the image that comedians have given it since
the current President was elected. But they had asked me to address one
of four issues. One was the balanced budget, one was illegal
immigration. And they said, please help us to tell fellow Republicans
or conservative Democrats that the Republican Party is--and here is the
quote--Duke, not taking milk from the mouths of infants, not waging war
upon poor young American children, and that is what you are setting the
record straight on here.
So let me give you another couple of minutes and then I would love to
join you in a special order next week to continue to set this record
straight. The flamingest liberals in the dominant media culture are
running wild with this theme. That it is being picked up in far-left
Hollywood and all their comedian front men, that we are literally
trying to hurt women and children, women, infants and children of the
WIC Programs and others.
So take another couple minutes, please.
Mr. CUNNINGHAM. We are finally getting through to the press. Here is
the Washington Post, the Washington Times, the Union. I talked to seven
of the superintendents in most liberal schools in California, that is
Los Angeles, San Francisco, Oakland, and they favored the block grant.
What they would like us to do even is to take the money and not even
go through the State but get it down to the local LEA, or the local
school district, so they are in favor of this. It takes out that middle
bureaucracy.
What we did cut in all of those thousands of reports, we cut those
out from the Federal Government, the personnel, the systems that have
to operate it, to take away the dollars that we are actually trying to
give. So we not only add dollars, we make it more cost effective so
that there is more money. They don't have to spend it on those
administration fees, on the extra people they have to hire to take care
of their reports. They don't have to go through the reports and send
them back here to Washington, DC.
We happen to believe that Government works best closest to the
people. What about the nutrition standards? Well, Duke, you are going
to individual States. In the language--I had the language that
protected the nutrition standards. Mr. Gunderson and Mrs. Roukema said,
Well, Duke, we still
[[Page H3038]] don't feel that it is strong enough. It said that the
latest science would prevail on nutrition standards.
In a bipartisan, Republican and Democrat, we passed two amendments to
protect the nutritional standards for the States. And the point is, are
we cutting children's nutrition programs? Absolutely not. We are adding
dollars every single year. And what the Democrats are doing,
politically motivated, in our old budget cycle, if the Democrats, when
they were in the majority, projected that we would have a million
dollars in the future for a program, but when it came time around for
the budget, they would say, Well, we are going to cut $500,000 from
that. We will reduce the rate of that growth by $500,000. They would
come back and tell you that they cut the budget in half, by 50 percent.
Did they? No. They increased it by $500 million, and that is what we
are doing. GAO projected that they would extend----
Mr. DORNAN. That is baseline budgeting.
Mr. CUNNINGHAM. At the end of 5 years, the rate would go up to 5.2
percent. This is at the end of 5 years. We are not even at that yet.
Mr. DORNAN. Mr. Speaker.
Mr. CUNNINGHAM. I will finish.
Mr. DORNAN. Then I want to ask you one question and then back to the
Bulge 50 years ago. Go ahead.
Mr. CUNNINGHAM. That we are not even out here in 5 years at the year
2001. We are here now. This 4.5 percent is more than they even
projected for the growth this year and I have added more money than
even the GAO baseline, and the political rhetoric, it is an
attempt to make us look like we are taking the food out of children's
mouths, and we are not, Mr. Speaker. We are increasing it. We are
making it cheaper.
We are giving the States the flexibility and at the same time we are
going to make it where people that can--my children don't need money to
go to school. I should have to pay for my child. I am not at a low
poverty level, and neither should other people that cannot afford it.
And that way we can bring down over a gradual period of time and
balance the budget.
Thank you, and I thank my friend.
Mr. DORNAN. Let me take you back to your youth to show people that
you can handle figures accurately.
Mr. CUNNINGHAM. That was a long time ago.
Mr. DORNAN. That is all right. You were a swimming coach before you
were a Navy fighter pilot.
Mr. CUNNINGHAM. Swimming and football coach at Hinsdale High School.
Mr. DORNAN. There are a lot of aces in our society. There are ace
pool players, there are ace marble players in the school yard, wide
receiver aces that get five touchdowns in a game, but there is only one
act that puts his life on the line, and that is a fighter ace, and that
is what you are. Well, I guess tank aces too out there in the sand.
Let me show people--I will give you a chance to shine a little bit
here because I love talking with my hands with you. What is the turn
rate of a Faggot, a MiG-15?
Mr. CUNNINGHAM. It turns at about 19 degrees a second.
Mr. DORNAN. How about a Fresco, MiG-17?
Mr. CUNNINGHAM. Turns at about 20 degrees a second. A Phantom turns
at about 11 degrees a second.
Mr. DORNAN. That is why our big Phantom that you were flying, what
was your back-seater's name? Driscoll?
Mr. CUNNINGHAM. Willie Driscoll and we were both Irish.
Mr. DORNAN. Happy St. Patrick's Day. Where is he today?
Mr. CUNNINGHAM. Willie sells real estate for Coldwell Banker and that
is not a 1-800 number.
Mr. DORNAN. May his sales increase if we can balance the budget
around here. So with that big Phantom turning what? What is his turn
ratio?
Mr. CUNNINGHAM. About 11, 11\1/2\ degrees a second at 420 knots.
Mr. DORNAN. What is a MiG-17 doing?
Mr. CUNNINGHAM. Twenty degrees a second.
Mr. DORNAN. So you can get inside that much smaller fighter?
Mr. CUNNINGHAM. No. If I get behind him and he turns at 19 to 20
degrees a second and I turn at 11, he is going to come around and shoot
me.
Mr. DORNAN. So he is turning more degrees than you are and a MiG-21
is what?
Mr. CUNNINGHAM. A MiG-21, depending on the speed, but at his best
turn rate turns in excess of 20 degrees a second.
Mr. DORNAN. So that is more of a fair fight. You have got a couple of
those.
Mr. CUNNINGHAM. He also has more power to go vertical.
Mr. DORNAN. The reason I brought this out is to show that my friend,
Duke Cunningham of San Diego, can handle and master figures, and you
taught this as the squadron CO of the aggressor squadron down there at
fighter town USA, Miramar. This is not rocket science or shooting down
MiG's for you to master these nutrition programs. What is the new name
of the education and labor committee?
Mr. CUNNINGHAM. Early Childhood, Youth and Families.
Mr. DORNAN. Early Childhood, Youth and Families.
Mr. Cunningham, I am glad you are on that committee. I am glad you
are doing this work. Let's keep telling the truth here and I want to
master these figures and not just be the self-appointed House historian
around here. Thanks, Duke.
And speaking of history, Mr. Speaker, sometimes when you speak in
grand terms about the sweep of battle in a war as cataclysmic or as
massive in numbers of participants as World War II, you lose the
viewpoint of a foxhole, the mud, one on one, combat situations.
Here is a book that I came across. I belong to the Military Book
Club, along with the History Book Club and lots of other political book
clubs, and I got a little book in the mail a couple of weeks before I
left for Europe on an Army aircraft with the Secretary of the Army,
Togo West, and sitting next to me, Harry Canard, as a 29-year-old full
Eagle, full bird colonel, who was G3 operations for General McAuliffe,
trapped inside Bastogne, completely surrounded by the best of German
Panzer units, demanding that they surrender, and of course McAuliffe
turned to his G3 in the headquarters as they read the German surrender
demand and McAuliffe says, Well, this is nuts, nuts to them. What
should I do, Harry?
General Canard, by the way, took the 1st Cavalry to Vietnam in 1965.
Quite a man, and young 28-year-old Lieutenant Colonel Lynn still made
bull in April a couple weeks before his birthday.
Lt. Col. Harry Canard said, Nuts is good enough, just tell them nuts,
and that is what their young officers carried to the German side to
this spit-and-polish Panzer commander, and the German reads the notes.
I remember Harry saying it to me in German. Pardon my German if you
speak the language, but he said something like, ``Neutz, Was ist das?''
``Negativ-affirmativ,'' and the young captain said, ``It means hell no;
hell no, we won't surrender.''
That was probably still fresh in my mind why I used those words in
the well January 25 while analyzing what aid and comfort to a hostile
force that we are engaged in combat, what truly constitutes when you
are in foreign countries. So ``Hell no, hell no, we won't surrender''
was embodied in the word ``nuts.''
Well, here is a small book, very quick and easy read by a young
private, as he puts it, a private comes of age, the title of the book
is, ``Inside the Battle of the Bulge,'' published in 1994 by Roscoe C.
Blunt, Jr. And in the foreword, in dedicating it to his sons, he
explains that the first version of my book was called, ``A War
Remembered.'' He made it more specific with ``Inside the Battle of the
Bulge'' and published it last year to take advantage of the 50th
anniversary.
He says, It was written for my sons, Roscoe C. Blunt III, to Randy A.
Blunt and to Richard D. Blunt. My purpose was to offer them--oh, I see,
Richard is probably his brother. He said, My purpose was to offer them
an insight into a time in my life that was quite remote from the man
they know.
Many fathers, as mine almost did, take to the grave the stories of
their youth when they were called upon to offer their very life or
their limbs or suffer unbelievably serious wounds as Bob Dole, the
leader of the Republicans in the Senate, majority leader in
[[Page H3039]] the Senate, suffered just 16 days before Hitler
committed suicide at the end of the war. Senator Dole is approaching
the 50th anniversary of his horrible wounds that kept him literally
imprisoned in a hospital in Kansas for 3\1/2\ years. The full length of
the war itself is what Bob had to add to his Army service. A young 21-
year-old lieutenant when a German artillery shell brought him to the
very edge of death's door.
This is the story also of the 84th Infantry Division. The ax chopping
at a piece of wood, one of the divisions that was formed in 1942,
building our Nation up to roll back Nazism, fascism, Mussolini, Hitler
and the warlords of Tojo.
So, please, to young people, if you want just one man's view of these
cataclysmic events across Europe, Roscoe Blunt's book, ``Inside the
Battle of the Bulge,'' is as good as it gets and it is very short. You
can read it in a night or two.
I wanted to put in the Record, Mr. Speaker, a brief analysis of why
Adolf Hitler, Chancellor and Furor of Germany, leader of Germany, why
in September 1944 he organized with great secrecy our intelligence, did
not break the secret of his massive offensive across the first few
acres of Germany, territory that we held on the West or allied side of
the Rhine River 50 years ago last December.
It said, Hitler's offensive, General Field Marshall Toeffel wrote
after the war, Hitler's offensive was because he, Hitler, was convinced
that the Allied coalition was on the verge of breaking up. He was into
the gossip of the tension between Montgomery and Gen. George Patton,
but he did not take into account the major skills as a conciliator of
Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, a man who had only been a lieutenant colonel at
the Louisiana war games in 1940. We did find the right man in the right
place at the right time to hold together all of these egos, in the best
sense of the word, of his combatant officers, British, Canadian, and
United States.
But the Bulge was mainly a United States battle, the British only
had--``only'' is a sad word to use--200 killed in action, that is 50
more than we lost in the whole gulf war and double what our Allies lost
in the gulf war. Two hundred is painful, but compared to our thousands,
11,000 killed in action and twice that missing in action, it was an
American conflict.
The nightmare in their Ardennes, Mr. Speaker, what we call the Bulge,
began on a snowy afternoon 2 days before the combat when a Sgt. Ralph
Neppel, to focus in on one man, and the rest of his machine gun squad,
December 14, 1944, set up a defensive perimeter at the end of the main
street of Birgel, and that was German soil this side of the Rhine, a
hamlet on the edge of the Herkin Forest, which is where Bob Michel, our
former leader was wounded and where one of our now deceased great
leaders on the other side, Mr. Nichols of Alabama had lost a leg in the
Herkin Forest trying to retrieve a wounded man from a mine field, he
also stepped on a mine leaving his leg in Europe. Before that time,
Neppel's company had advanced steadily from that day it landed at
Normandy on D-day plus 13.
The combat through the hedge rows and into Germany had been fierce,
but nothing had prepared Sgt. Ralph Neppel for what he was to endure
that evening at Birgel. Near dusk, the machine gun crew was astonished
to hear the rumble of tanks entering the town. Neppel later reasoned
that he and his men had not seen them earlier because they were
camouflaged for winter. The sound of the grinding machinery, the
terrifying sound for ground forces, came closer until a number of tanks
emerged from the narrow side streets and turned toward the squad's
position. German infantry followed the lead tank using it as a shield.
Neppel held his fire until the Germans had advanced to within 100
yards, then released a burst that killed several of the foot soldiers.
The first tank lumbered forward within 30 yards of Neppel, then fired
one cannon shot and blasted the Americans and sent the machine gun
flying. Neppel was thrown 10 yards from the gun, his legs wounded
horribly. In shock, he looked down to see that his foot had been blown
off. He realized the other men were either dead or about to die, so he
crawled on his elbows back to the gun and tried to set it up himself.
When he found the tripod had been knocked loose, he cradled the gun
in the crook of his arm and fired until he was too weak to lift it any
further. He killed the remaining infantrymen around the lead German
tank.
Without infantry cover, the Panzer tank was left vulnerable to attack
from bazookas or other American foot soldiers with phosphorous grenades
so the tanks stopped. Neppel remembered the furious commander emerging
from his tank and like a vision from a nightmare, advancing on the
sergeant with a Luger held in his hand. The officer fired, hitting
Neppel in the helmet and left him for dead. The helmet apparently
diverted the course of the bullet. Neppel's skull was creased but he
was alive and conscious.
Remember, Mr. Speaker, no foot, the rest of his leg shredded. When he
again heard the rumbling of tanks, he was gripped by the awful thought
that they were moving forward and would soon crush him under their tank
treads. Instead, they withdrew.
Neppel was rescued by American troops as they took Birgel. He was to
spend 6 months regaining his strength in a hospital. He had single-
handedly turned back a Nazi armored attack but had lost both of his
legs in the effort.
When he heard he was to receive the Medal of Honor, his reaction was
to feel humble. This quotes him, ``to feel humble.'' You see so many
die, then in the hospital, you see triple amputees, guys who have lost
their eyesight. You feel there are so many more deserving that you
shouldn't be taking the glory as an individual. This was one of many
recipients of the Medal of Honor and one of those who came home with
terrible wounds, as I repeat, Senator Bob Dole did.
Here is a picture of Neppel posing with a French rifle prior to his
individual battle with a German Tiger on Panther tank. It doesn't
identify the tank.
Here is another individual case. Pfc. Melvin ``Bud'' Biddle and the
rest of his unit were in Reims, France, waiting to go home when the
Germans launched their attack. Veterans of campaigns in Italy and
southern France, they had turned in their equipment and were passing
the time listening to Axis Sally, an English-speaking Nazi radio
propagandist who played the latest hits from America while spouting
lies in an attempt to demoralize the Allies. The troops were amused and
then influenced by her show.
That night she announced, men of the 517th Parachute Infantry
Regiment, you think you are going home, but you are not. This time, her
information was deadly correct. The men of the 517th were issued new
equipment, so new, in fact, that their rifles were still packed in
Cosmoline grease, which the men had to clean off before they boarded
their trucks and were driven to a crossroads in an area near the most
advanced point of the German thrust into Belgium. This is during the
later rescue operation of Patton's Third Army.
The men were to face again the elite troops of the German Army,
Panzer divisions, paratroopers, and the dreaded SS soldiers. The
mission of the 517th was to clear the Germans out of 3 miles of
territory between the towns of Soy and Hotton. Biddle was the lead
scout for the 517th. I may have mixed up the 101st with the 82d
Airborne, here, Mr. Speaker, and I won't have time to correct it. A job
he had inherited with other scouts who were wounded or killed during
the Italian campaign.
One of his qualifications was his superb vision. He later picked up
the nickname, Hawkeye, this GI from Indiana. I saw every German out in
front before they saw me, which was a large part of keeping me alive.
He was keenly aware of the responsibility he held as the lead scout and
said later it helped him forget his fear.
I think I got so I would rather die than be a coward. I was terrified
most of the time. But there were two or three times when I had no fear,
no fear. That is why I love to wear it on my ball cap, Team Dornan, no
fear, and it is remarkable. It makes you so you can operate in the
lead.
One of those times came on the 7th day of the Battle of the Bulge,
the 23d of December. Biddle was
ahead of his company as he crawled through the thick underbrush toward
railroad tracks leading out of Hotton.
I would recommend to these young people in the gallery, get a map.
Keep
[[Page H3040]] the map next to the books and the stories as you read
this and track what these 18-, 19-, 20- and 21-year-old heroes, 21- and
22-year-old platoon leaders, 20-, 21-year-old sergeants, platoon
sergeants leading three squads of young men and some 10 years older
than they.
Unseen by the Germans, he crawled to within 10 feet of three
sentries. Firing with his M1 rifle, he wounded one man in the shoulder,
killed a second with two shots near the heart. The third sentry fled
but not before Biddle shot him twice.
I should have got him. He kept running and got to their machine guns
and then all hell broke loose. Under heavy fire, Biddle stayed on point
as his unit crawled to within range through lobbed grenades and
destroyed all but one of the guns. With his last grenade, Biddle blew
up the remaining machinegun, then he charged the surviving gunners,
killing them all.
That night the Americans heard a large number of tracked vehicles
which Biddle hoped would be American. I have never heard so many
Germans. They didn't have equipment like we had, not in our numbers.
Biddle volunteered to lead two others in a scouting foray to make
contact with these vehicles, what he thought were Americans. In the
darkness, the three men came upon a German officer who fired at them.
Separated from the others, Biddle crawled toward the German lines by
mistake, realizing his error, he continued to reconnoiter by himself,
alone, and carried back valuable information for use in the next day's
attack.
Mr. Speaker, the next morning he spotted a group of Germans dug in
along a ridge. He ducked behind a small bank for cover. He found he
could not properly maneuver in order to shoot. In basic training he had
learned to shoot from a sitting position, his favorite, but at the time
he had thought there would be no way to use that in combat.
Now moving to a sitting stance, he shot 14 men. He hit each one in
the head, imagining that the helmets were the same as the targets he
had aimed at in training. Although others in his unit later would view
the bodies, Biddle could not bring himself to look at the carnage he
had wrought. His sharp shooting, however, made it possible for his unit
to secure the village.
The next day, a German 88, same artillery that hit Senator Dole,
exploded a shell in a building behind him as he was returning to his
unit from a hospital in London. Another soldier asked if he had heard
about the guy in the Bulge that shot all those people. My God, between
Soy and Hotton, it was littered with Germans. I think they are going to
put the guy in for the Medal of Honor. He is another one of our
surviving Medal of Honor winners from the Bulge battle. Most paid for
it with their lives.
Mr. Speaker, I would like to submit this for the Record. I would like
to submit an article on the 80,987 men who were casualties, again,
10,276 killed, 23,218 missing. And I would like to put in an article on
what was happening this month 50 years ago, the rout in the Rhineland
and also another article from the VFW magazine this month sweeping the
southern Philippines where our young men, who may be not so young
today, watching will know that I have not forgotten the Pacific.
And I close on the words of a youngster plus 50 that I met on the
scene in the Bulge. I said, ``What division were you in, corporal?''
And he said he was wearing a jacket from his old uniform. He said 106th
Division, two of our regiments surrendered; the largest American battle
surrender in the history of our Nation.
And he said these sentences to me: ``We were all college kids. We
were too young. We didn't make out very well. It was all a waste.'' And
I said, ``Wait a minute. Did you regroup? Were you captured?'' ``No.''
``Were you retrained? Did you go on to fight in Germany and bring about
the collapse of Hitler on D-Day, March 8th Harry Truman's birthday.''
``Yes, Congressman, I did.'' And I said, ``Corporal, It was worth it.
Your units weren't a failure. You took the brunt, as unbloodied,
unseasoned troops that were put on what they thought was a quiet front-
line area and no matter what your casualties nor how your regimental
commander surrendered you to save lives since you were out of
ammunition, you were part of what Eisenhower called `The Great
Crusade.'''
At some point I am going to do a special order on our young prisoners
who were killed not at night, as it is shown in movies, not
machinegunned from the back of trucks where they dropped the tail end
of the truck, but the way it happened for real, in the middle of the
afternoon, in an open field, at this Baugneuz crossroads and that
sacred ground where so many of our prisoners were machinegunned by SS
order telling young men to kill other men their age.
That Malmedy massacre deserves a half-hour of its own and I will try
and do that, Mr. Speaker, and then move on to Okinawa next month. These
heroes gave us our freedom. The Nation was only about 135 million at
Pearl Harbor. We are now closing in on 270 million, twice as many
people, as we called upon to mount this great effort for victory and
freedom in World War II.
Reagan used to like to say, ``We are Americans, we can do anything.''
Is there any reason we can't balance the budget here and recapture the
American spirit and leave a better country to our grandchildren? Of
course we can do it and nobody is asking us to die or have our young
bodies torn apart in the process.
I yield back a few seconds, look forward to hearing my colleague from
Pennsylvania.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The time of the gentleman from California
has expired.
Rout in the Rhineland
(By Ken Hechler)
In a Belgian orchard 10 miles from the German border at
daybreak on Sept. 10, 1944, a barrage from U.S. 155mm guns
thundered into the German frontier town of Bildchen. The
church steeple collapsed in a shower of mortar dust and
bricks. Defenders now realized that although they were being
pulverized from afar, GIs were knocking at the gates of their
homeland.
Within five days, U.S. forces were assaulting the ``West
Wall'' or Siegfried Line, officially launching the Rhineland
Campaign.
GIs joked about the much-vaunted Siegfried Line with its
pillboxes and ``dragon's teeth'' tank obstacles: ``All we
have to do is to send a couple of dentists to yank out the
dragon teeth and we'll tie knots in the Siegfried Line!'' The
boast came back to haunt its author, as some of the fiercest
fighting of the war came as the Americans spent from Oct. 2-
21 capturing the first sizable German city: Aachen.
The day after the Long Tom artillery shell toppled the
Bildchen steeple, Staff Sgt. Warner W. Holzinger of the 85th
Cavalry Reconnaissance Squadron had the honor of leading the
first patrol across the German border.
But it soon became apparent that the Germans fully intended
to use the pyramid-shaped concrete obstacles, plus their
string of reinforced pillboxes, to exact a severe toll on the
attackers.
``Jewel City'': Aachen
Aachen opened the way to the Rhineland and the Cologne
plain. To the German garrison--12,000 strong--defending
Aachen, Heinrich Himmler sent this message: ``German
soldiers! Heroes of Aachen! Our Fuehrer calls upon you to
defend to the last bullet, the last gasp of breath, Aachen,
this jewel city of German kultur, this shrine where German
emperors and kings have been enthroned!''
Combat engineers, with bangalore torpedoes and TNT, blasted
a path through the West Wall fortifications.
1st Lt. Frank Kolb of the 1st Div. led the first platoon to
launch the attack toward Aachen. It was rough going. In a
five-day period, the 1st Bn., 16th Inf. Regt. lost 300 men
out of its 1,300-man strength. Supported by the 3rd Armored
Div. and the 30th Inf. Div. farther north, the ``Big Red
One'' found it slow slogging as the rains churned up the mud
and kept the bombers out of the sky.
German SS troops strengthened the enemy lines. Future Medal
of Honor recipient T/Sgt. Jake Lindsey remarked: ``Either
those Krauts were crazy or else they were the bravest
soldiers in the world.'' House-to-house fighting within
Aachen produced murderously high casualties on both sides.
(The 30th Inf. Div. lost 3,100 men; the 1st Inf. Div.
suffered an equal number of casualties.)
The 248th Engineer Combat Bn. created a humorous diversion
by loading up several streetcars on a downgrade into Aachen
with time-fused shells and other explosives; swarms of news
correspondents covered the bizarre exploit, which actually
caused little damage.
Finally, after Aachen was surrounded and his own
headquarters were under small arms fire, the German commander
surrendered when his ammunition ran out.
``The city is as dead as a Roman ruin,'' wrote an American
observer. ``But unlike a ruin it has none of the grace of
gradual
[[Page H3041]] decay * * * Burst sewers, broken gas mains and
dead animals have raised an almost overpowering smell in many
parts of the city.'' Hitler's prophecy had been realized:
``Give me five years and you will not recognize Germany
again,'' he had said.
ANCIENT METZ FALLS
Some 113 miles to the south, on the French border, ``Blood
and Guts'' Gen. George S. Patton had led his Third Army on a
450-mile run from Avranches at the base of the Cherbourg
Peninsula to the gates of the fortress city of Metz, where he
met the forbidding fortifications of Fort Driant.
The fort had concrete walls seven feet thick, connected by
underground tunnels with a central fortress. The defenders
had emplaced huge quantities of barbed wire to add to the
problems facing attackers. The German garrison of 10,000 had
ample supplies of food and water. Other forts in the Metz
area were similarly equipped.
In the early days of November, the 5th, 90th and 95th
Infantry and 10th Armored divisions of XX Corps were slowed
by the heavy rains which plagued the entire theater. Hitler
took a very personal interest in the defense of Metz,
reiterating his order that it must be held ``to the last
man.'' The new garrison commander, Heinrich Kittel, pledged
to carry out that order.
There were many individual feats of heroism as U.S. forces
slowly closed the jaws of the trap around Metz between Nov.
18-22. Pfc. Elmer A. Eggert of L Co., 379th Inf. Regt., 95th
Div., advanced alone against a machine gun, killing five of
the enemy and capturing four, earning a Distinguished Service
Cross. After his tank received a direct hit, Cpl. C.J. Smith
of the 778th Tank Bn. dismounted the .30-caliber machine gun
and fought on alone until help arrived; he was also awarded a
DSC.
Despite Hitler's own order, he allowed an SS regiment--
which he planned to use in the Ardennes offensive--to slip
out of Metz in the last stages of the U.S. offensive. Gen.
Kittel finally surrendered Metz on Nov. 21, although several
of the forts, including Driant, held out well into December
before giving up.
The 5th Div.'s November losses were 172 KIA, 1,005 WIA and
143 MIA. The 95th Div. estimated 281 KIA, 1,503 WIA and 405
MIA. Records of casualties of other units involved in the
Metz operation are incomplete. Hugh M. Cole, official Army
historian of the Metz operation, concluded that the capture
of Metz was ``skillfully planned and marked by thorough
execution,'' and ``may long remain an outstanding example of
a prepared battle for the reduction of a fortified
position.''
The U.S. First and Ninth Armies had launched Operation
Queen in mid-November, with the Ninth clearing the west bank
of the Roer River from Brachelen to Altdorf by early
December. (See the November issue for the Battle of Huertgen
Forest.) Queen witnessed, incidentally, the largest air-
ground cooperative effort to date in the ETO.
Offensive operations were resumed Jan. 17, 1945. Operation
Grenade achieved the Allied assault crossings over the Roer
River, followed by a northeastward drive by the U.S. Ninth
Army's link up with the First Canadian Army along the Rhine.
The Ninth Army (its dash to the Rhine was dubbed Operation
Flashpoint) comprised four corps with 13 divisions. In
reaching the Rhine, the Ninth Army captured 30,000 German
soldiers and killed 6,000, at the cost of 7,300 U.S.
casualties.
A sequel to Grenade--Operation Lumberjack--was a converging
thrust made by the U.S. First and Third Armies to trap the
Germans in the Eifel Mountains during the first week of
March. GIs were now poised to ``bounce'' the Rhine.
REMAGEN: AN ``OPEN WOUND''
On the afternoon of March 7, 1945, 34-year-old Sgt. Alex
Drabik from Toledo, Ohio, bobbed and weaved his squad across
a Rhine River railroad bridge (Ludendorff) at the little town
of Remagen, Germany. His company commander, Lt. Karl
Timmermann, from A Co., 27th Armored Inf. Bn., 9th Armored
Div., who had ordered the crossing, followed close behind.
Drabik, Timmermann and a handful of infantrymen, engineers
and tankers, performed one of the most incredible feats in
the annals of military history.
The Rhine River had not been crossed by an invading army
since Napoleon's time over a century earlier. Hitler had
ordered all the bridges up and down the Rhine to be blown up
as the Americans approached. The last bridge, between Cologne
and Koblenz, was still standing to enable German tanks and
artillery to retreat safely. Just as Lt. Timmermann gave the
order for Drabik's squad to cross, tremendous explosions
shook the bridge and seemed to lift it from its foundations.
The structure shuddered, but miraculously remained standing.
At this point, Lt. Hugh Mott and two brave armored
engineers, Eugene Dorland and John Reynolds, dashed out on
the bridge and feverishly cut wires to the remaining
explosive charges. The Germans blew a 30-foot crater in the
approach to the bridge to prevent tanks from crossing. Sgt.
Clemon Knapp of Rupert, W.Va., and a crew, manned a ``tank
dozer''--a Sherman tank with a bulldozer blade--and filled in
the crater. Knapp and his crew received Silver Stars for
their actions.
The night of March 7 was one of the darkest of the war. Yet
Lt. Windsor Miller gently guided his 35-ton Sherman tanks
across the shaky bridge, dodging some gaping holes as he
maneuvered between white tapes strung by the engineers.
Across the Rhine, Miller's tank platoon beat off several
German counter-attacks as they helped the armored infantry
hang on to their tenuous toehold.
When the bridge was captured, the first troops proudly
attached a sign reading: Cross the Rhine with dry feet--
Courtesty 9th Arm'd Div.
The 9th, 78th and 99th Infantry divisions rushed to the
scene to reinforce the bridgehead. Military police, tank-
destroyer and anti-aircraft units were awarded Presidential
Unit Citations for their heroism under fire.
Hitler threw in jet planes, underwater swimmers, giant V-2
rockets and massive reinforcements in trying to destroy the
bridge. The bridge itself was so severely damaged that it
collapsed without warning on March 17, taking the lives of 28
repairmen and injuring 93. But not before a pontoon and
treadway bridge had been built under fire on either side of
the permanent bridge.
west bank cleansed
By mid-March, mopping up operations west of the Rhine were
completed by the U.S. VIII Corps. Within a few days,
Operation Undertone was under way by the U.S. Seventh Army to
clear the Saar-Palatinate triangle.
On March 22, 1945, the 90th Inf. Div. cleared Mainz while
other GIs achieved a surprise late night crossing of the
Rhine at Oppenheim, south of Mainz. By then, the U.S. First
Army held a bridgehead across the river 20 miles wide and
eight miles deep; six divisions were east of the Rhine. The
stage was set for the final drive into Germany's heartland.
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