[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 70 (Friday, May 23, 1997)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5142-S5144]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         ADDITIONAL STATEMENTS

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                         A MEMORIAL DAY TRIBUTE

 Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I rise today to recognize the 
sacrifices made by the millions of men and women who have served in the 
Armed Forces of the United States.
  While Members of this body have perhaps thousands of constituent 
service men and women on the rolls from their State, men and women who 
have served and are serving be they active duty, Reserve, National 
Guard, or retired, I want to draw special attention to one story in 
particular, an uncommon story of valor and courage, that is truly 
representative of the thousands of veterans in Alabama and all over 
these United States.
  Mr. President, I want to speak today about the supreme sacrifice many 
Americans made for our country as prisoners of war. Mr. Hubert Davis, 
of Tuscaloosa, AL, is one such hero. As a B-17 fighter tail gunner in 
World War II, Mr. Davis' plane was hit while approaching a bombing 
target over Schweinfurt, Germany, on April 13, 1944. After his B-17 
became engulfed in flames, Mr. Davis struggled with an awkward British 
parachute as the plane capsized, like a ship caught in a terrible storm 
at sea and crashed to the ground. Mr. Davis barely managed to escape 
from the B-17 and immediately pulled his ripcord. He parachuted to the 
ground and was captured by the German forces. As the D-day invasion was 
still some weeks away there was no hope of escaping to Allied lines in 
Europe. During his prison experience, Mr. Davis was subsequently moved 
from prison camp to prison camp while suffering from injuries sustained 
in the rough parachute landing. He was subjected to interrogations in 
which life and limb was threatened--all for our freedom.
  Mr. Davis' family received a telegram notifying them that their son 
was lost-in-action and a second telegram 10 days later announcing that 
he was killed-in-action. Eventually, however, Mr. Davis was liberated 
by the 13th Armored Division of Patton's 3d Army and now resides in 
Tuscaloosa, AL.
  Mr. President, Mr. Davis was prepared to pay the ultimate price for 
his country. While I have highlighted the odyssey of one tailgunner, 
and one ex-POW from World War II, Mr. Davis is emblematic of the 
thousands of men and women who dedicated the very fabric of their being 
for the greatest democracy known to history. From the Revolutionary War 
to the Persian Gulf, we have been blessed by an exemplary group of 
patriots who have served their country admirably and with distinction. 
Since our country has enjoyed many years of relative peace as a result 
of the heroic efforts of men and women like Hubert Davis, I hope his 
story reminds each of us of the trials and tribulations our forebears 
have endured to preserve the precious freedom we all so deeply enjoy 
today.
  Mr. President, to further recognize the valor of our many veterans, I 
ask to have printed in the Record along with my brief remarks Gen. 
Douglas

[[Page S5143]]

MacArthur's farewell speech to the cadets at West Point, May 12, 1962. 
Since its delivery, this speech has been known as MacArthur's ``Duty, 
Honor, Country Speech.'' It is plain spoken and on the day when we 
reflect on those who have given so much, it serves to remind us all 
what it means to be an American. God bless the United States.
  The remarks follow:

   Gen. Douglas MacArthur: Duty, Honor, Country; May 12, 1962, U.S. 
                    Military Academy, West Point, NY

       No human being could fail to be deeply moved by such a 
     tribute as this [Thayer Award], coming from a profession I 
     have served so long and a people I have loved so well. It 
     fills me with an emotion I cannot express. But this award is 
     not intended primarily to honor a personality, but to 
     symbolize a great moral code--a code of conduct and chivalry 
     of those who guard this beloved land of culture and ancient 
     descent. For all hours and for all time, it is an expression 
     of the ethics of the American soldier. That I should be 
     integrated in this way with so noble an ideal arouses a sense 
     of pride, and yet of humility, which will be with me always.
       ``Duty,'' ``honor'', ``country''--those three hallowed 
     words reverently dictate what you ought to be, what you can 
     be, what you will be. They are your rallying point to build 
     courage when courage seems to fail, to regain faith when 
     there seems to be little cause for faith, to create hope when 
     hope becomes forlorn.
       Unhappily, I possess neither that eloquence of diction, 
     that poetry of imagination, nor that brilliance of metaphor 
     to tell you all that they mean.
       The unbelievers will say they are but words, but a slogan, 
     but a flamboyant phrase. Every pedant, every demagogue, every 
     cynic, every hypocrite, every troublemaker, and, I am sorry 
     to say, some others of an entirely different character, will 
     try to downgrade them even to the extent of mockery and 
     ridicule.
       But these are some of the things they do. They build your 
     basic character. They mold you for your future roles as the 
     custodians of the Nation's defense. They make you strong 
     enough to know when you are weak, and brave enough to face 
     yourself when you are afraid.


                          What the Words Teach

       They teach you to be proud and unbending in honest failure, 
     but humble and gentle in success; not to substitute words for 
     actions, not to seek the path of comfort, but to face the 
     stress and spur of0difficulty and challenge; to learn to 
     stand up in the storm, but to have compassion on those who 
     fall; to master yourself before you seek to master others; to 
     have a heart that is clean, a goal that is high; to learn to 
     laugh, yet never forget how to weep; to reach into the 
     future, yet never neglect the past; to be serious, yet never 
     to take yourself too seriously; to be modest so that you will 
     remember the simplicity of true greatness, the open mind of 
     true wisdom, the meekness of true strength.
       They give you a temperate will, a quality of the 
     imagination, a vigor of the emotions, a freshness of the deep 
     springs of life, a temperamental predominance of courage over 
     timidity, of an appetite for adventure over love of ease.
       They create in you heart the sense of wonder, the unfailing 
     hope of what next, and joy and inspiration of life. They 
     teach you in this way to be an officer and a gentleman.
       And what sort of soldiers are those you are to lead? Are 
     they reliable? Are they brave? Are they capable of victory?
       Their story is known to all of you. It is the story of the 
     American man-at-arms. My estimate of him was formed on the 
     battlefield many, many years ago, and has never changed. 
     I regarded him then, as I regard him now, as one of the 
     world's noblest figures; not only as one of the finest 
     military characters, but also as one of the most 
     stainless.
       His name and fame are the birthright of every American 
     citizen. In his youth and strength, his love and loyalty, he 
     gave all that mortality can give. He needs no eulogy from me; 
     or from any other man. He has written his own history and 
     written it in red on his enemy's breast.
       But when I think of his patience in adversity of his 
     courage under fire and of his modesty in victory, I am filled 
     with an emotion of admiration I cannot put into words. He 
     belongs to history as furnishing one of the greatest examples 
     of successful patriotism. He belongs to posterity as the 
     instructor of future generations in the principles of liberty 
     and freedom. He belongs to the present, to us, by his virtues 
     and by his achievements.


                        witness to the fortitude

       In 20 campaigns, on a hundred battlefields, around a 
     thousand camp fires, I have witnessed that enduring 
     fortitude, that patriotic self-abnegation, and that 
     invincible determination which have carved his statue in the 
     hearts of his people.
       From one end of the world to the other, he has drained deep 
     the chalice of courage. As I listened to those songs [of the 
     glee club], in memory's eye I could see those staggering 
     columns of the first World War, bending under soggy packs on 
     many a weary match, from dripping dusk to drizzling dawn, 
     slogging ankle deep through the mire of shell-pocked roads to 
     form grimly for the attack, blue-lipped, covered with sludge 
     and mud, chilled by the wind and rain, driving home to their 
     objective, and for many to the judgment seat of God.
       I do not know the dignity of their birth, but I do know the 
     glory of their death. They died, unquestioning, 
     uncomplaining, with faith in their hearts, and on their lips 
     the hope that we would go on to victory.
       Always for them: Duty, honor, country. Always their blood, 
     and sweat, and tears, as we sought the way and the light and 
     the truth. And 20 years after, on the other side of the 
     globe, again the filth of murky foxholes, the stench of 
     ghostly trenches, the slime of dripping dugouts, those 
     boiling suns of relentless heat, those torrential rains of 
     devastating storms, the loneliness and utter desolation of 
     jungle trails, the bitterness of long separation from those 
     they loved and cherished, the deadly pestilence of tropical 
     disease, the horror of stricken areas of war.


                         swift and sure attack

       Their resolute and determined defense, their swift and sure 
     attack, their indomitable purpose, their complete and 
     decisive victory--always through the bloody haze of their 
     last reverberating shot, the vision of gaunt, ghastly men, 
     reverently following your password of duty, honor, country.
       The code which those words perpetuate embraces the highest 
     moral law and will stand the test of any ethics or 
     philosophies ever promulgated for the things that are right 
     and its restraints are from the things that are wrong. The 
     soldier, above all other men, is required to practice the 
     greatest act of religious training--sacrifice. In battle, and 
     in the face of danger and death, he discloses those divine 
     attributes which his Maker gave when He created man in His 
     own image. No physical courage and no greater strength can 
     take the place of the divine help which alone can sustain 
     him. However hard the incidents of war may be, the soldier 
     who is called upon to offer and to give his life for his 
     country is the noblest development of mankind.
       You now face a new world, a world of change. the thrust 
     into outer space of the satellite, spheres, and missiles 
     marks a beginning of another epoch in the long story of 
     mankind. In the five or more billions of years the scientists 
     tell us it has taken to form the earth, in the three or more 
     billion years of development of the human race, there has 
     never been a more abrupt or staggering evolution.
       We deal now, not with things of this world alone, but with 
     illimitable distances and as yet unfathomed mysteries of the 
     universe. We are reaching out for a new and boundless 
     frontier. We speak in strange terms of harnessing the cosmic 
     energy, of making winds and tides work for us, of creating 
     unheard of synthetic materials to supplement or even replace 
     our old standard basics; to purify sea water for our drink; 
     of mining ocean floors for new fields of wealth and food; of 
     disease preventatives to expand life into the hundreds of 
     years; of controlling the weather for a more equitable 
     distribution of heat and cold, of rain and shine; of 
     spaceships to the moon; of the primary target in war, no 
     longer limited to the armed forces of an enemy, but instead 
     to include his civil populations; of ultimate conflict 
     between a united human race and the sinister forces of some 
     other planetary galaxy; of such dreams and fantasies as to 
     make life the most exciting of all times.
       And through all this welter of change and development your 
     mission remains fixed, determined, inviolable. It is to win 
     our wars. Everything else in your professional career is but 
     corollary to this vital dedication. All other public 
     purposes, all other public projects, all other public needs, 
     great or small, will find others for their accomplishments; 
     but you are the ones who are trained to fight.


                         the profession of arms

       Yours is the profession of arms, the will to win, the sure 
     knowledge that in war there is no substitute for victory, 
     that if you lose, the Nation will be destroyed, that the very 
     obsession of your public service must be duty, honor, 
     country.
       Others will debate the controversial issues, national and 
     international, which divide men's minds. But serene, calm, 
     aloof, you stand as the Nation's war guardian, as its 
     lifeguard from the raging tides of international conflict, as 
     its gladiator in the arena of battle. For a century and a 
     half you have defended, guarded, and protected its hallowed 
     traditions of liberty and freedom, of right and justice.
       Let civilian voices argue the merits or demerits of our 
     processes of government: Whether our strength is being sapped 
     by deficit financing indulged in too long, by Federal 
     paternalism grown too mighty, by power groups grown too 
     arrogant, by politics grown too corrupt, by crime grown too 
     rampant, by morals grown too low, by taxes grown too high, by 
     extremists grown too violent; whether our personal liberties 
     are as thorough and complete as they should be.
       These great national problems are not for your professional 
     participation or military solution. Your guidepost stands out 
     like a ten-fold beacon in the night: Duty, honor, country.
       You are the leaven which binds together the entire fabric 
     of our national system of defense. From your ranks come the 
     great captains who hold the Nation's destiny in their hands 
     the moment the war tocsin sounds.
       The long, gray line has never failed us. Were you to do so, 
     a million ghosts in olive

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     drab, in brown khaki, in blue and gray, would rise from their 
     white crosses, thundering those magic words: Duty, honor, 
     country.


                            Prays for Peace

       This does not mean that you are warmongers. On the 
     contrary, the soldier above all other people prays for peace, 
     for he must suffer and bear the deepest wounds and scars of 
     war. But always in our ears ring the ominous words of Plato, 
     that wisest of all philosophers: ``Only the dead have seen 
     the end of war.''
       The shadows are lengthening for me. The twilight is here. 
     My days of old have vanished--tone and tint. They have gone 
     glimmering through the dreams of things that were. Their 
     memory is one of wondrous beauty, watered by tears and coaxed 
     and caressed by the smiles of yesterday. I listen vainly, but 
     with thirsty ear, for the witching melody of faint bugles 
     blowing reveille, of far drums beating the long roll.
       In my dreams I hear again the crash of guns, the rattle of 
     musketry, the strange, mournful mutter of the battlefield. 
     But in the evening of my memory always I come back to West 
     Point. Always there echoes and re-echoes: Duty, honor, 
     country.
       Today marks my final roll call with you. But I want you to 
     know that when I cross the river, my last conscious thoughts 
     will be of the corps, and the corps, and the corps.
       I bid you farewell.

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