[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 28 (Thursday, March 6, 1997)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E400]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                WILL AN AMERICAN ``TOMMY'' PLEASE STAND?

                                 ______
                                 

                            HON. ZOE LOFGREN

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                        Thursday, March 6, 1997

  Ms. LOFGREN. Mr. Speaker, Tom Harney, an attorney in San Jose, CA, 
has written a thought-provoking article in a recent edition of Stars 
and Stripes which concerns the debt we owe our veterans and soldiers. 
For those who do not regularly receive Stars and Stripes, I wish to 
make this useful article available.

              [From the Stars and Stripes, Jan. 26, 1997]

                Will An American ``Tommy'' Please Stand?

                         (By Thomas Roy Harney)

       Rudyard Kipling's poem ``Tommy'' rose from the depths of my 
     so-called brain recently, triggered and recalled from those 
     depths by the print-media news.
       Tommy, a lawyer's guide to veterans affairs, is the name of 
     the quarterly newsletter published by the Veterans Law 
     Section of the Federal Bar Association, but I had somehow 
     previously failed to make the obvious connection between the 
     poem and the newsletter.
       The poem ``Tommy'' is from a different time, 1892; a 
     different country, Great Britain; and almost a different 
     language, English Cockney; yet it is right on point 
     concerning American veterans and all Americans today.
       ``Tommy Atkins'' or ``Tommy'' is the British equivalent of 
     the American GI (e.g., Bill Mauldin's Willie and Joe in his 
     popular cartoon series ``Up Front''), and ``Tommy Atkins'' is 
     the speaker in Kipling's poem.
       The speaker is calling our attention to the gross disparity 
     in the value that the citizenry places on its soldiers. The 
     unjust disparity he observes is the miserable treatment 
     accorded the soldier and ex-soldier in peacetime, contrasted 
     with their treatment when the winds of war are blowing or, as 
     Tommy puts it, when ``there's trouble in the wind.''
       Kipling's tribute to Mr. Thomas Atkins is relevant today, 
     because in 1996, more than 100 years after it was penned by 
     him, an American ``Tommy'' wouldn't have to look too far for 
     modern-day American examples to support his disparity 
     contention.
       Were he writing today, Kipling's Mr. Atkins could have 
     cited the statement released by Pentagon officials recently 
     that the military logs for an eight-day period during which 
     thousands of American troops might have been exposed to nerve 
     gas and other Iraqi chemical weapons shortly after the 
     Persian Gulf war appear to have been removed or lost and 
     cannot be located despite an exhaustive search.
       There are several mysterious gaps in the otherwise 
     meticulous combat logs. The gaps include the period in early 
     March 1991 in which American combat engineers blew up the 
     sprawling Kamisiyah ammunition depot in southern Iraq, an 
     event that exposed thousands of American troops to nerve gas.
       One wonders if ``Mr. Tommy Atkins'' would feel the need to 
     point out that at one time the Defense Department had denied 
     to Congress that such combat logs even existed, and the DoD 
     released the logs last year only after a Georgia veterans 
     group sought them under the Freedom of Information Act.
       Only recently has the Pentagon acknowledged that the nerve 
     gas sarin and other chemical weapons had definitely been 
     stored in the Iraqi ammunition depot at Kamisiyah that was 
     destroyed by U.S. troops in March 1991.
       That event at the Kamisiyah ammunition depot exposing 
     thousands of U.S. soldiers to a cloud of the nerve gas sarin 
     and other deadly chemicals, poisoning from anti-nerve gas 
     tablets, and poisoning from pesticides are the presumptive 
     sources of the disabling physical health problems that have 
     been plaguing veterans and children of veterans of the 
     Persian Gulf War.
       As an attorney, I respect the way Kipling's speaker, 
     ``Mister Atkins,'' makes his case; his supporting examples 
     are clear and visual, his logic is straightforward and his 
     closing line poses a clear point for all Americans to ponder.
       The concerned but muted and fragmented chorus of American 
     voices would do well to find a present-day point man like 
     ``Tommy Atkins'' who, armed with fresh examples to support 
     his disparity contention, could forcefully champion the 
     rights of responsible Americans and blast his closing line to 
     Pentagon officials, the Defense Department, the VA and 
     others--shouting, with the last words of the poem, ``Bloomin 
     fools'' we're not.

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