[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 177 (Thursday, November 9, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Page S16928]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         ADDITIONAL STATEMENTS

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                   COMMEMORATION OF VETERANS DAY 1995

 Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, as we prepare to celebrate Veterans 
Day 1995, I would like to express my heartfelt respect, thanks, and 
admiration to each and every American veteran for the sacrifice they 
made, and the pain they have endured to ensure that the flame of 
freedom will never be extinguished.
  Seventy-seven years ago, at the eleventh hour, on the eleventh day, 
of the eleventh month, an armistice was signed between the Allies and 
the Central Powers. As the guns of both the victors and the vanquished 
fell silent, ``the war to end all wars'' slipped into history.
  For the next 20 years, ``Armistice Day'' was celebrated with parades 
and speeches, simple ceremonies, and sacred observances. For many 
years, American Legion posts across America sponsored special 
commemorations of Armistice Day during which buglers played ``Taps'' at 
11 o'clock at the main intersections of their towns, and for 2 minutes 
all traffic and daily transactions ceased, as citizens stopped to honor 
those who had fallen in defense of liberty.
  Mr. President, no one who lived through the horror of World War I 
believed that such a massive and brutal conflict could ever again 
occur. Unfortunately, the second World War proved to be even more 
terrible than the first, with twice and many dead and vastly more 
material destruction. The intervening years, it seemed, were not the 
beginning of an era of lasting peace, as so many had hoped, but merely 
a brief interlude of tranquility that would be shattered many times in 
the decades ahead.
  Today, we celebrate Veterans Day--a day that honors not only the dead 
of World War I, but all those who have served their country in combat. 
This Saturday, at Arlington National Cemetery where sentries from the 
Old Guard still maintain a constant vigil at the Tomb of the Unknowns, 
we will pay tribute to the more than 1 million men and women who have 
died in all U.S. wars in the service of their country.
  Mr. President, our Nation has undergone many transformations since 
the heros of the first Armistice Day marched off to war. The agony 
didn't end with World War II, the Korean conflict, or even Vietnam, 
which for the first time, brought another kind of pain to veterans. But 
thankfully, we now recognize the sacrifice of those men and women, and 
perhaps we even appreciate it more because recognition was so long in 
coming.
  When a 21-year-old Army corporal named Tom Root returned from Vietnam 
in 1972, he hid in an airport bathroom, wishing he could change into 
civilian clothes and so avoid having to run a gauntlet of anti-war 
protesters. When he and his Illinois National Guard unit returned home 
from Desert Storm almost a decade later, the parade that received them 
was 13 miles long.
  Mr. President, although we are today at war with no nation, America's 
young men and women are still being called upon to help preserve peace 
and freedom in far-off places around the world--which should remind us 
that although the price of war is high, the price of freedom is even 
higher, because it never ends.
  Those men and women--and all the men and women who served --cannot be 
honored enough. We must do everything in our power to ensure that they 
are never forgotten or abandoned--especially not on the field of 
battle. And we must do everything we can to ensure that the most sacred 
and visible symbol of America freedom under which so many fought and 
died--the American flag--is never, under any circumstances, dishonored 
or desecrated.
  Mr. President, throughout history, we have been captivated by images 
that seem to sum up all the stress or emotion or pathos of a particular 
event--George Washington's winter encampment at Valley Forge, Gen. 
Robert E. Lee's final ride to Appomattox along a path lined by ranks of 
Union troops standing at attention, Winston Churchill bracing Britons 
to their task.
  Just a few weeks ago, we celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of V-J 
Day. One of the most poignant scenes of World War II, one that will 
live forever in the hearts and minds of Americans, is the image of a 
handful of Marines braced against a whipping Pacific wind, raising the 
American flag over Iwo Jima. That symbol of freedom--that flies over 
the U.S. Capitol in Washington, that adorns the flagpoles of our 
schools and communities, that graces the windows and doorways of our 
homes, that is draped in silent tribute over the coffins of our dead--
deserves our protection. It should--and I hope it will--be clearly and 
explicitly protected by law.
  We must keep America's promises to the men and women who so nobly and 
unselfishly risked their lives to answer to their country's call, and 
we must forever honor those who, in the words of one soldier-poet, 
``tasted death in youth that Liberty might grow old.''
  Mr. President, 2,000 years ago, a Greek historian commemorated the 
war of his generation and paid tribute to veterans who perished and 
veterans who came home. I think his is a fitting tribute to all 
veterans, and I offer it now, in grateful appreciation, to all those 
who served our country in war and in peace. He said:

       I speak not of that in which their remains are laid but of 
     that in which their glory survives, and is proclaimed always 
     and on every fitting occasion both in word and deed.
       For the whole earth is the sepulcher of famous men. Not 
     only are they commemorated by columns and inscriptions in 
     their own country, but in foreign lands there dwells also an 
     unwritten memorial to them, graven not on stone, but in the 
     hearts of men.

  May the Almighty God who watches over us all, bless America and 
protect all who place themselves in harm's way so that we may enjoy the 
blessings and benefits of freedom.

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