[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 83 (Monday, June 14, 1999)]
[House]
[Pages H4215-H4216]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     THERE ARE HEROES IN OUR MIDST

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from South Dakota (Mr. Thune) is recognized for 5 minutes.

[[Page H4216]]

  Mr. THUNE. Mr. Speaker, a couple of weeks ago today, I had the 
opportunity to present the Medal of Jubilee of Liberty to those South 
Dakota men who were among those men who stormed, held and kept the 
beaches of Normandy 55 years ago. From June 6, 1944 until August 31, 
1944 these men fought in one of the most historic and pivotal military 
engagements in American and European history.
  Winston Churchill called D-Day the greatest thing that we have ever 
attempted. Viewed with the benefit of 55 years of history, historians 
rank the invasion of Normandy as one of the greatest military actions 
ever on par with the battle of Actium in 31 B.C. that marked the 
beginning of the Roman Empire, and with the English defeat of the 
Spanish Armada in 1588. It is considered one of the half dozen greatest 
battles in human history.
  I asked someone from my staff to call the men that we were going to 
be presenting medals to try and get more information about them and 
their involvement in the Normandy invasion so I could present it at the 
Memorial Day ceremony.
  My staffer made several phone calls and talked to many of the men who 
were honored at that event but none of them really wanted to talk about 
their experience. They said that war is a horrible experience and they 
hoped that no one ever has to go through what they went through on the 
shores of Normandy.
  They also said that really they did not do all that much. They said 
there were so many others who did so much more, so many buddies who 
never came home from those beaches. My staffer was amazed at their 
humility and their reticence.
  Humility and reticence are two qualities in rare supply in America 
today. My staffer has been raised in the TV talk show America where 
people talk about everything that has ever happened to them all the 
time, all over the place, over and over again until everyone everywhere 
knows literally everything about them, and somehow this is considered 
healthy.
  The men who fought in Normandy were raised in a different America. 
They were raised to do their duty, quietly, humbly, without question or 
rancor, and then come home again, marry the girl who waited for them, 
get a job, raise a family and live their lives.
  Mr. Speaker, there is a lot of talk in America today about a lack of 
role models. We have shootings in our schools and people say it is 
because our young people have no one to look up to. They say that our 
young people have no heroes. If our young people have no heroes it is 
because we are looking for heroes in all the wrong places. We are 
looking for heroes among sports figures and on Hollywood sound stages 
and in the soldout amphitheaters of pop music concerts. We should be 
looking for the heroes who sit across the kitchen table from us. We 
should be looking for our heroes in the men who read to us and raised 
us and taught us right from wrong.
  The men who fought at Normandy are heroes. They may not be rich and 
they may not be famous and they would never claim that title for 
themselves but they are heroes in the truest sense of the word. Many of 
their friends never came home. Nine thousand men lost their lives in 
the invasion; 2,500 at Omaha Beach alone; another 2,500 among the 
American Airborne division; 1,100 Canadians and 3,000 British.
  But by the evening of June 6, 1944, Allied power had prevailed all 
across the Normandy beachhead. More than 100,000 men had come ashore, 
the first of millions more who would follow.
  It is hard to describe horror to those who have never been there. It 
is hard for those of us who have never been in battle to imagine smoke 
and death and screaming tracers and the roar of cannon fire. We cannot 
imagine the horrors that these men have witnessed. We can only see the 
outcome.
  These are the men who freed a continent. These are the men who won a 
war. These men knew that some things are worth dying for; that 
democracy is worth dying for; that America is worth dying for. They 
believed that someone had to stop Hitler. They did it because they had 
orders to do so. They did it because it was their job.
  Webster defines a hero as, quote, a man admired for his achievements 
or qualities; one that shows great courage, unquote.
  These men, the men of the summer of 1944, stormed and secured a 
beachhead. These men toppled a regime. These men rushed in to save 
democracy at that crucial moment in history when someone almost 
succeeded in taking it away. These men are heroes, though they will not 
admit it.
  So the next time, America, that you think your kids do not have any 
role models and there is no one left to look up to, turn off the TV and 
look across the kitchen table at your father, your grandfather or your 
great grandfather and ask them about the war. Ask them what they did. 
Hear their stories. There are heroes walking in our midst. We need to 
open our eyes and see them before us and thank them for their courage.
  It is my great privilege and honor to be able to recognize those men 
from my home State of South Dakota who served our country so nobly and 
so bravely in the summer of 1944 and helped secure the freedom that we 
enjoy in America today and hope that we will be able to pass it on to 
the next generation.

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