[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 75 (Thursday, June 15, 2000)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1033-E1034]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


         THE 102ND ANNIVERSARY OF THE U.S. NAVY HOSPITAL CORPS

                                 ______
                                 

                         HON. SOLOMON P. ORTIZ

                                of texas

                    in the house of representatives

                        Thursday, June 15, 2000

  Mr. ORTIZ. Mr. Speaker, the tradition of Naval enlisted medical 
personnel goes back to the navy of the 13 Colonies in the Revolutionary 
War, before they even declared independence. These medical sailors were 
known by many designations: first the Loblolly Boys, whose job it was 
to sound the bell for daily sick call aboard ship, and to spread the 
floor of the sickbay with sand so that the ship's surgeon would not 
slip on the blood there.
  Later they were known as the Surgeons' Stewards, the Apothecaries, 
and the Baymen. Then, on June 17, 1898, in the midst of the Spanish-
American War, Congress authorized The Hospital Corps of the United 
States Navy. They were and still are the only ``Corps'' in the U.S. 
military composed entirely of enlisted members. Since that founding, 
Navy Corpsmen have had the responsibility and the honor of caring for 
the Fleet and the Marines.
  The first corpsman to earn a Medal of Honor was serving with the 
Marines in China when the U.S. took part in the intervention there to 
end the Boxer Rebellion at the turn of the last century.
  Between the turn of that century and the onset of World War I, 
corpsmen sailed around the globe with President Teddy Roosevelt's Great 
White Fleet, landed in Nicaragua with the Marines, and a second 
corpsman earned the Medal of Honor in San Diego Harbor a few years 
later, aiding his shipmates when the USS Bennington's boiler exploded.
  Corpsmen took care of navy shore parties during the Moro Uprising in 
the Philippine Islands and hit the beach with the Marines during the 
seizure of Vera Cruz, Mexico, in 1914.

[[Page E1034]]

In both of these actions corpsmen were again honored by Congress. 
Corpsmen took care of the Marines when they landed in Santo Domingo, 
and then in Haiti for the first time.
  Then in the ``Great War,'' the ``War to End All Wars,'' corpsmen were 
with the fleet, hunting U-boats in the first Battle of the Atlantic. 
They earned two more Medals of Honor in that war, serving with their 
Marines in the barbed wire and poison gas hell of the trenches and 
forests of France.
  Between the World Wars, corpsmen went ashore with the Marines in 
Nicaragua a second time. Then at Pearl Harbor several corpsmen, still 
tending to their shipmates' wounds, were and still are entombed within 
the USS Arizona. And as the globe tore itself apart during World War 
II, they were serving with the fleet in Pacific actions against the 
Imperial Japanese Navy and with the Atlantic Fleet again combating the 
German U-boat menace. They were aboard hospital ships, on med-evac 
planes, and manning hospitals and clinics around the world. And they 
were in every landing on every invasion beach from North Africa to 
Normandy, and from Guadalcanal to Japan.
  During the battle for the island of Iwo Jima a corpsman helped raise 
the Stars and Stripes atop Mt. Suribachi and was then immortalized 
along with his Marines in the statue that is now the Marine Corps 
Memorial just across the Potomac River in Arlington. And after Iwo Jima 
and the last major battle of the war, on the island of Okinawa, seven 
more Medals of Honor were hung 'round the necks of corpsmen.
  Corpsmen were again in action as the Cold War turned hot on the 
Korean Peninsula. They served alongside their Marines, from the early 
bleak days inside the Pusan Perimeter to the Inchon Landings, up to the 
frozen Chosin Reservoir, and back down to the stalemated trench warfare 
along what became the DMZ. And they earned five of the seven Medals of 
Honor awarded to the Navy during those three bitter years.
  Corpsmen were aboard the USS Nautilus when she surfaced at the North 
Pole, and they accompanied their Marines ashore in Lebanon for the 
first time and then to the Dominican Republic. They were aboard the 
hospital ships off the coast of Vietnam. While ashore there, again in 
action with the Marines in the sweltering jungles and rice paddies, 
corpsmen earned their 19th, 20th, and 21st Medals of Honor.
  Corpsmen were with their Marines hitting the beach in Grenada, and 
then going ashore in Lebanon for the second time. Over a dozen corpsmen 
were killed there at the Beirut Airport by the terrorist truck bombing 
of the Marine barracks. They sailed aboard the hospital ships and 
served again with their Marines in the invasion of Panama, and in 
Desert Shield/Desert Storm aboard the ships of the Fleet, manning 
hospital ships in the Persian Gulf and ashore staffing Navy forward 
fleet hospitals, and on the front lines in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and 
Iraq.
  Just in the last decade they've accompanied their Marines ashore in 
Haiti yet again, and for famine relief in Somalia. They've cared for 
Haitian refugees in Guantanimo Bay, Cuba, and for Kurdish refugees in 
Guam. They've carried on their healing traditions with the fleet 
hospitals in the bitter conflict in the former Yugoslavia, and gone at 
a moment's notice with the Marines to evacuate American and allied 
nationals from countless hot spots around the globe. They've held their 
heads high as they helped to safeguard health and heal injury and 
disease throughout the Fleet, with the Fleet's Marines, for all their 
families, for military retirees, and in hundreds of isolated duty 
stations flung across the globe, even to the South Pole.
  Just two years ago, Congress awarded another corpsman the Medal of 
Honor, this one belatedly, for his actions in Vietnam. It was the 22nd 
such honor awarded to Corpsmen, who've won more Medals of Honor than 
any other rating in the military. This is even more remarkable for the 
fact that all of these Congressional honors were earned while helping 
others, and that in so doing they never fired a weapon except in 
defense of their patients. And of the 22 men so honored, 10 gave their 
lives in earning that honor, sacrificing their lives to save others.
  Saturday is the Hospital Corps' 102nd Anniversary. And after more 
than a century, the sons and daughters of corpsmen, and the 
grandchildren of corpsmen, are now serving their country as Corpsmen, 
carrying on the long, proud, honored tradition of their forebears.
  And as they celebrate this landmark in time, they do so in 
camaraderie with their teammates in healing, the Navy's dental 
technicians, nurses, doctors, dentists, and administrators, scientists, 
and clinicians of the Medical Service Corps, with their partners 
throughout military medicine, and with all those they've cared for. 
They look back in pride at the good they've accomplished and remember 
fondly all those who've made them what they are, establishing these 
traditions of helping and of serving, whenever and wherever help and 
service are needed, sacrificing much--and too frequently sacrificing 
all--to do so. And finally, they look eagerly ahead to a future full of 
challenges unimagined, and more opportunities to do what they do best: 
to care for those who need them.
  And so, Happy 102nd Birthday, United States Navy Hospital Corps!

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