[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 87 (Wednesday, May 24, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7401-S7403]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                        A RETROSPECT OF V-E DAY

  Mr. COCHRAN. Mr. President, an issue of the journal entitled 
Uniformed Services Journal, May-June 1995, contains an article 
entitled, ``World War II Revisited: A Retrospect Of V-E Day and the 
Events Leading Up To It.''
  The article includes recollections of some of the distinguished 
Members of the Congress who participated in World War II, among them 
Senator Strom Thurmond, Senator Bob Dole, Senator Daniel Inouye, 
Congressmen Tom Bevill, Sam Gibbons, Sonny Montgomery, and others.
  It is an excellent reminiscence of their experiences and their views 
about the significance of V-E Day and their personal involvement in the 
events leading up to that occasion.
  I ask unanimous consent that a copy of the article from the Uniformed 
Services Journal be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

World War II Revisited: A Retrospect of V-E Day and the Events Leading 
                                Up To It

                           (By Cathy Lumsden)

       World War II (WW II) represents many things to many people. 
     It represents sacrifice, freedom and hope for a better 
     tomorrow. The road to freedom was paved with death and 
     destruction. Many of you are familiar with Jim Pennington's 
     stories of WW II at retiree recognition programs, chapter 
     events and in the USJ, some more than once. But these stories 
     and memories that follow are more than just stories. In 
     today's climate of historical revisionism and political 
     correctness, they remain as one of the few accurate eye-
     witness accounts of the making of American history in the 
     Great War that literally saved the world. We cannot forget 
     why we fought WWII, ``the war to end all wars'' or the men 
     and women who fought the war. The thoughts and feelings that 
     follow are real. Take the time to read and understand the 
     contributions these Americans made in the fight for freedom.


                         senator strom thurmond

       Sen. Thurmond was serving as a Circuit Judge in his home 
     state when war was declared on Germany. On that day, he 
     called President Roosevelt and volunteered, even though he 
     was exempted from service. Approximately a year later in 
     1943, LTC Thurmond, USA was a member of the 82nd Airborne 
     Division assigned to First Army Headquarters in Europe. He is 
     the only Senator still serving in Congress who participated 
     in the Normandy Invasion on D-Day.
       He was one of three men who volunteered to land in Normandy 
     aboard a glider. The fire was so heavy that his glider was 
     forced to go north to find a safer spot to land. Instead of 
     it getting safer, it got worse. The glider landed in an apple 
     orchard nearby. He was injured in the landing in the 
     forehead, hand and knee. However, LTC Thurmond still joined 
     the rest of the forces in the subsequent battles of the 
     Invasion. LTC Thurmond would have preferred to have jumped 
     but there wasn't sufficient time to train for the jump. After 
     the invasion, he returned to Army Headquarters just as his 
     unit got ready to go into St-Lo and into Paris.
       On V-E Day, LTC Thurmond was in Leipzig, Germany when he 
     learned of the end of [[Page S7402]] the war in Europe. He 
     and his unit were disappointed that they were not allowed to 
     take Berlin and had to let the Russians take it. LTC Thurmond 
     was one of the men who uncovered and helped liberate 
     Buchenwald Concentration Camp. He paints a grim picture of 
     what he saw. ``I have never seen anything like it in my life. 
     Bodies stacked up like cord wood, eight to ten feet high, 
     those who had died and those who were still living . . . They 
     killed them in one of three ways; by starving them to death 
     with one bowl of thin pea soup per day . . . inducing them to 
     climb a fence to get out, where they were shot . . . or they 
     (the prisoners) were told to go into a big booth like a 
     telephone booth and wait until the SS guards came in . . . 
     they (prisoners) would go into the front of the booth and the 
     SS Guards would go into the back of the booth and hit them 
     with a mallet and smash their heads and kill them . . . The 
     wife of the Commander was particularly cruel, she would take 
     the skin from anyone who had tatoos to make lamp shades . . 
     .'' Sen. Thurmond was selected to go on to the Pacific. He 
     went to Fort Jackson, SC for a month, then by train to 
     California and then on to the Philippines. LTC Thurmond was 
     in the Philippines when
      the war ended. He captured a number of Japanese troops. He 
     returned to Fort Bragg, NC and was called back to the 
     Supreme Court of South Carolina. Sen. Thurmond was awarded 
     five Battle Stars with the 82nd Airborne Division. For his 
     military service, he earned 18 decorations, and awards, 
     including the Legion of Merit with Oak Leaf Cluster, 
     Purple Heart, Bronze Star for Valor, Belgian Order of the 
     Crown and the French Croix de Guerre.


                        senator bob dole (r-ks)

       Senator Dole shares his thoughts on WW II and V-E Day, we 
     should take a moment to remember America's place in the 
     world. When I witnessed the emotion of those gathered on the 
     beaches of France last summer, memories came flooding back--
     memories of heroism, sacrifice and the pain men and women 
     suffered. We must never be reluctant about our greatness as a 
     country--nor ashamed of our national strength. There is one 
     responsibility only the federal government has, and that is 
     to protect our freedom. We must stop placing the agenda of 
     the United Nations before the interest of the United States. 
     Let us remember that America has been the greatest force for 
     good the world has ever known. Before visiting France last 
     year, I was in Northern Italy where I served in the Tenth 
     Mountain Division 50 years before. While revisiting the 
     battle sites, I thought about why we had been sent there, 
     about the America we were risking our lives to protect and 
     about the hopes for the generations to follow. As we open the 
     door to another century, we can celebrate the fact that the 
     world is a safer, freer place because of American leadership. 
     We must continue to do what we have always done best--leading 
     by example.
       Senator Dole was a Platoon Leader with the legendary Tenth 
     Mountain Division. Cpt. Dole was injured while serving in 
     Northern Italy on April 14, 1945. He was awarded two Purple 
     Hearts and one Bronze Star with Oak Leaf Cluster.


                      senator daniel inouye (d-hi)

       Sen Inouye was awarded a battlefield commission in Italy as 
     a Second Lieutenant in the United States Army. This occurred 
     just as his unit, the 442nd Regimental Combat Team left to 
     rescue ``The Lost Battalion'' of the 141st Infantry. It had 
     been surrounded and was desperately short of supplies and 
     ammunition.Two days later he left to join his outfit. By the 
     time he reached them, the bloody battle of The Lost Battalion 
     was over. ``My platoon, numbering 20 men when I left, now had 
     11 capable of carrying a weapon--and that included me.'' Lt. 
     Inouye considered himself lucky thanks to two silver dollars 
     that he carried through every campaign. One was bent and the 
     other cracked almost in two from the impact of a German 
     bullet in France. (Sen. Inouye served in both France and 
     Italy.) He carried them in his breast pocket but on the night 
     of April 20, 1945, lost them. Despite his better judgment, he 
     could not shake the fear that something was about to happen.
       At first light (April 21, 1945), his unit (E Company) 
     jumped. E Company's objective was Colle Musatello, a high and 
     heavily defended ridge. Lt. Inouye's Company managed to make 
     it within 40 yards of the German bunkers then almost at once 
     three machine guns opened up at them. He took a hit in the 
     stomach but still continued to fight. Finally he was close 
     enough to pull the pin on the last grenade. ``As I drew my 
     arm back, a German stood waist-high in the bunker. He was 
     aiming a rifle grenade at me from a range of ten yards. And 
     then as I cocked my arm to throw, he fired, and the grenade 
     smashed into my right elbow. It exploded and all but tore my 
     arm off . . . The German was reloading his rifle, but my 
     grenade blew up in his face. I stumbled to my feet, closing 
     on the bunker, firing my tommy gun lefthanded, the useless 
     right arm slapping red and wet against my side . . . a bullet 
     caught me in the right leg. The German resistance in our 
     sector ended April 23. Nine days later, the war in Italy was 
     over, and a week after that the enemy surrendered 
     unconditionally.'' Senator Inouye was awarded the 
     Distinguished Service Cross, the Purple Heart with Oak Leaf 
     Cluster and the Bronze Star.


                   congressman tom bevill (d-4th-al)

       Last year, I participated in the commemoration of the 50th 
     Anniversary of the D-Day Invasion on the coast of Normandy, 
     France. The men who participated in that invasion will always 
     be remembered for their heroism. It brought back many 
     memories for me, although I was not part of the initial 
     invasion. As a new Army Second Lieutenant, I was sent to 
     England in late February of 1944, less than four months 
     before D-Day. I was in a staging area with the 5th Armored 
     Division, where I assisted in drilling the troops who were in 
     the first wave to storm the coast of Normandy. At night we 
     would load the troops on ships with their rifles and 
     ammunition and send them out under cover of darkness. They 
     did not know where they were going. They would land somewhere 
     along the coast of Normandy. I remember how anxious the 
     troops were. I realized it was no drill the day we issued 
     emergency rations to the troops. Suddenly, they were provided 
     kits with a several days' supply of chocolate bars, 
     cigarettes and K-rations. We had never done that before. And, 
     that's how we knew it was the real thing. I will never think 
     of myself as a war hero. I am not. That honor goes to men 
     like my colleague, Congressman Sam Gibbons of Florida, who 
     parachuted behind the German lines on D-Day. That honor goes 
     to men like the late Congressman Bill Nichols of Alabama who 
     lost a leg in WW II. That honor goes to Travis Alvis, my 
     childhood friend from Townley, who was killed in the D-Day 
     Invasion. That honor goes to many, many others who stormed 
     the beaches of Normandy in the name of freedom and democracy.


                  congressman sam gibbons (d-11th-fl)

       Congressman Gibbons served in WWII as an Army Captain in 
     the 501st Parachute Infantry of the 101st Airborne. Gibbons 
     was a member of the initial assault force which invaded
      Normandy on D-Day. He is the only Member of the House of 
     Representatives serving today who participated in the 
     Invasion. He chose to remember V-E Day like this:
       ``V-E Day was a beautiful, sunny day. The weather was warm 
     where I was in Paris and everyone was absolutely jubliant. I 
     actually drove my jeep down the Champs-Elysees and weaved in 
     and out of people dancing there. I saw V-E Day at the best 
     time, from the best place.''


              congressman ``sonny'' montgomery (d-3rd-ms)

       I served in the European Theatre during WW II. I was a 
     Second Lieutenant with the 12th Armored Division which 
     arrived in France in November, 1944. We were assigned to the 
     Seventh Army part of the time and with the Third Army part of 
     the time as we drove through France and Germany. We were in 
     heavy combat during the fall and winter of 1944 and 1945. The 
     toughest battle was against well-entrenched German forces at 
     Herlisheim on January 9-10, 1945. We lost a number of tanks 
     in the fighting there, but we held back a German 
     counterattack and finally broke through enemy defenses. The 
     German resistance began to break up after that and we then 
     moved at a rapid pace toward the Rhine River. Another 
     significant event occurred in April when elements of the 
     Twelfth Armored Division captured the bridge over the Danube 
     River at Dillingen before German demolition men could wreck 
     it. Securing that bridge provided a vital artery for Allied 
     troops to flood into southern Germany and helped speed up our 
     efforts to end the war.
       We helped liberate a number of concentration camps in 
     Germany as the war neared its end. We drove past hundreds of 
     freed Jewish prisoners walking and sometimes stumbling, along 
     the road. The sight of these improverished people in their 
     tattered clothes is something even the most hardened soldiers 
     can never forget. I was in southern Germany when I heard the 
     Armed Forces Radio broadcast that the war in Europe had 
     ended, but I had little time to celebrate. I got orders a 
     week later to go to the Pacific theater and prepare for the 
     invasion of Japan. That invasion, of course, was averted when 
     we dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.


                   radm eugene b. fluckey (usn-ret.)

       Rear Admiral Fluckey, author of Thunder Below was 
     Commanding Officer of the submarine USS Barb. He received the 
     Medal of Honor and four Navy Crosses and is a veteran of 
     eleven war patrols during WW II. RADM Fluckey is credited 
     with the most tonnage sunk by a U.S. skipper in WW II, 
     seventeen ships including a carrier, raider-carrier and a 
     frigate. He is proudest of the fact that no one attached to 
     the Barb received the Purple Heart and that the sub came back 
     ready and eager to fight again. In the Atlantic, he chased 
     German submarines but his biggest contributions were in the 
     Pacific theatre. His contributions there will be highlighted 
     in the upcoming V-J issue of the USI.
               corporal chase fielding (usa), former pow

       CPL Fielding arrived in Normandy on D+7 as part of the 29th 
     Division going in to replace the 13th Airborne Division. They 
     made it up to St-Lo which was later leveled by the Air Corps. 
     Three days later, he was only one of three men remaining in 
     his platoon, and was taken prisoner on June 30, 1944. Under 
     American artillery fire, he along with two others were taken 
     to Stalag XII A on the outskirts of Limsburg. ``We were fed 
     bread and soup, bread and tea in the morning and water soup 
     the next two meals. . . . Our meat consisted of worms which 
     somehow got in the soup.'' We traveled by train for five days 
     and five nights, forty to fifty men in a small boxcar. We 
     were let out only twice to [[Page S7403]] perform our 
     toilets. Ate, slept and excreted in the same place. It was 
     suffocatingly hot during the day, and with little ventilation 
     and sometimes without water for thirty-six hours, quite a few 
     passed out.
       Upon arrival in Limsburg, we had our first bath since the 
     middle of July. We left Stalag XII A on August 24 and arrived 
     at 4-B (Muhlburg) on August 26 and were put into barracks. 
     ``The camp was like heaven compared to the others. . . . I 
     met a member of Tito's band, age 15, and (who had been) 
     wounded twice. There was a kid there, a machine-gunner, who 
     was only eleven years old. . . . The Russians were treated 
     horribly. In some Russian barracks cannibalism had occurred. 
     They were like sticks, and when too weak to move were thrown 
     in a lime pit. . . . One huge field there was fertilized with 
     10,000 bodies of Jews.'' On September 14th, CPL Fielding 
     moved out as part of a working party. He passed through 
     Dresden on the 15th and entered Sudatenland that night. On 
     the 16th, the working party was housed at Falkensaw where it 
     worked in coal mines. CPL Fielding went on his first sick 
     call on October 6th due to boils. He was treated by a Serbian 
     doctor in the Russian compound. A week and a half later, he 
     developed an abscess and underwent surgery. A hole the size 
     of an egg was left by a French surgeon purposely to keep him 
     out of the mines for awhile. Mr. Fielding's health worsened 
     in November because of another abscess, swollen tonsils and 
     diphtheria.
       Later an abscess was removed from the back of his head 
     simply by cutting his head open without any painkiller. About 
     a month later, he was returned to the commando and also to 
     work in the mines. Rumors that Americans were coming closer 
     began in April. Late in April, CPL Fielding and several other 
     prisoners escaped and hid in a bomb shelter. He headed due 
     west. The woods were full of
      Germans. Picking up information of SS troop movements, the 
     group was able to avoid the SS. On April 27th (officially 
     the 28th) they reached a Yank outpost. CPL Fielding later 
     learned that those prisoners who stayed behind were the 
     last to be liberated in Europe and when found were in such 
     a state that many could hardly walk. A great many had 
     died.


                    CAPT FRANK X. RILEY (uscg-ret.)

       Captain Riley graduated from the Coast Guard Academy on 
     June 19, 1942. He was assigned as Executive Officer on LCI 
     323 which was designated as Task Force Command Ship (TFCS) 
     and was the first LCI to leave the States. He served aboard 
     the LCI off the North African, Italian and Sicilian coasts; 
     as Commanding Officer of the vessel, he participated in the 
     Normandy Invasion. During the Invasion at Normandy. Captain 
     Riley remembers that two hundred troops were loaded in the 
     troop compartment. His ship, a salvage vessel saved the lives 
     of 1500 Army personnel and salvaged 30 Landing Craft 
     Personnel Vehicles (LCPV) and 50 larger vessels known as 
     LCMs. Six New York City fire-fighters were put onboard the 
     Landing Craft-Infantry (LCI) to control fires. General Omar 
     Bradley rode the LCI twice, with his second ride being to 
     Omaha Beach.


                   CAPT QUENTIN R. WALSH (USCG-RET.)

       Captain Walsh graduated from the Coast Guard Academy in 
     1933. On December 7, 1941, his ship (APA) Joseph Dickman was 
     part of a secret U.S. Navy convoy ``William Sail 12X'' 
     approaching Cape Town South Africa. His ship returned to the 
     United States on February 28, 1942 after having been diverted 
     to India. His ship then became involved in the Battle of the 
     Atlantic, surviving a torpedo attack May 15, 1942. Captain 
     Walsh was assigned to the staff of Commander, U.S. Naval 
     Forces, Europe in the Planning and Logistics Section. He was 
     assigned to the planning for Operation Overlord and Phase 
     Neptune and the logistics requirement for Cherbourg and 
     LeHavre. He organized, trained and commanded U.S. Navy Task 
     Unit 127.2.8 which landed over Beach Utah attached to the 7th 
     Corps, U.S. Army. ``My Task Unit 127.2.8 (from June 26--June 
     29, 1944):
       1. Cleaned out the last resistance in the Arsenal.
       2. Plotted and delivered the mine fields in the harbor to 
     the British mine sweepers off the port.
       3. Established United States Navy Headquarters, Cherbourg.
       We had to have Cherbourg to sustain the invasion (Normandy) 
     and the Germans knew it.'' Task Unit 127.2.8 entered 
     Cherbourg by going over the top of Fort duRoule with the 79th 
     Division on June 26, 1944. Subsequently, he led a heavily-
     armed unit, equipped with submachine guns, hand grenades and 
     bazookas the cleaned out the last resistance in the Cherbourg 
     Arsenal, established U.S. Navy Headquarters in Cherbourg, 
     and, by interrogating slave laborers, Free French and German 
     prisoners, obtained and plotted the mine fields in Cherbourg 
     harbor. Captain Walsh carried out the reconnaissance of ports 
     in Brittany from St. Malo to Brest attached to Patton's Third 
     Army, 8th Corps, until ordered to carry out the 
     reconnaissance of LeHavre with the First Canadian Army on 
     September 12, 1944. Captain Walsh considers his three most 
     important contributions to the Invasion of Normandy as; U.S. 
     Navy Task Unit 127.2.8, the capture of German mine fields, 
     Cherbourg and the capture of Fort duHomet.
       These are just of few of the brave men who along with women 
     saved the world. Without them and others like them, democracy 
     as we know it, would not exist. We thank them for their 
     heroism and salute them one and all.
     

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