[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 185 (Monday, December 5, 2011)]
[Senate]
[Page S8181]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                HONORING REGINALD COOPER AUGUSTINE, JR.

  Mr. KIRK. Mr. President, I rise in tribute to an American hero and 
Illinois resident who was laid to rest at Arlington National Cemetery 
on December 2.
  Reginald Cooper Augustine, Jr. was born on October 12, 1913 in 
Decatur, IL. His parents, Reginald and Pauline, were prominent members 
of the community, both serving at different times on the Decatur school 
board.
  Reginald was an all American kid growing up in Illinois during the 
Great Depression. As a teenager in the 1920s, he spent his Saturdays at 
the silent moving pictures. In junior high, he spent a year delivering 
the Decatur Herald--getting up every morning at 3 a.m. and returning to 
bed by 5 a.m. During high school, he played football and participated 
in the school band, while also working at the Biflex Bumper Company.
  After graduating from Decatur High School in 1931, Reginald attended 
Northwestern University as a member of the third entering class of 
Austin Scholars. This program, launched in September 1929, provided 
full room, board, and tuition for 4 undergraduate years, plus a year of 
all-expenses paid study and travel abroad. He received his bachelor's 
degree from Northwestern in 1935, with a major in Latin and a minor in 
German. These language skills proved pivotal in the direction of the 
rest of his life.
  After college, Reginald spent 16 months touring Europe and North 
Africa on a Harley-Davidson motorcycle that he acquired in Rotterdam, 
perfecting his knowledge of German, French, Italian, Dutch, and 
Spanish. During an extended stay in Germany, he witnessed a Nazi party 
rally in Heidelberg that he later described as akin to a Fourth of July 
celebration with scarlet swastika banners and leather-booted storm 
troopers. He returned to the U.S. in late September 1937, never 
forgetting what he had witnessed.
  The Selective Service Act of 1940 required all U.S. residents between 
the ages of 21 and 35 to register, and in 1940, Mr. Augustine was 27. 
He was to be drafted in February, 1942, but after the Japanese Empire 
bombed Pearl Harbor, he went straight to the enlistment center in 
Peoria to sign up and serve his country in the U.S. Army Air Corps.
  During the Second World War, Mr. Augustine was selected to join an 
elite detachment of linguists, spies and scientists by COL Boris Pash, 
who headed a mission code-named Alsos. This mission was led by LTG 
Leslie R. Groves under the Manhattan Project. Groves suspected German 
physicists were engaging in a similar nuclear program and feared that 
they would complete a bomb first. The Alsos mission was tasked with 
determining whether the Nazis had developed an atomic bomb. Mission 
operatives moved into newly liberated areas just behind advancing 
Allied lines to find Nazi scientists, capture and interrogate them, as 
well as confiscate and secure stocks of refined uranium that were 
urgently needed by the Manhattan Project.
  Reginald was selected as an ideal candidate and put in charge of 
field operations for this elite detachment because of his knowledge of 
French and German, as well as his extensive experience in Europe. 
During one operation in search of uranium in September 1944, he and 
Colonel Pash entered a plant located near Antwerp, Belgium where 
fighting was still going on between British and German forces. There, 
they found approximately 70 tons of refined uranium.
  Far more difficult was a mission to southern France, which at that 
time was a dangerous no man's land, occupied by 2 competing resistance 
movements--one Communist, the other non-Communist. According to 
Reginald's memoirs, ``no British or American forces, and not even any 
units of the regular French army'' were present in the area. As part of 
a group of 6 Alsos officers, he conducted the negotiations with 
partisans and officials. At a French arsenal in Toulouse, armed with a 
Geiger counter, he discovered a major cache of uranium. Reginald, 
Colonel Pash, and a well-armed U.S. military contingent later returned 
to remove the uranium by force. Reginald accompanied the shipment of 
uranium back to the U.S. on a U.S. Navy ship. This uranium was 
eventually used in the Little Boy bomb dropped on Hiroshima.
  Reginald went on many other critical missions, including one to 
recover the international radium standards from a small eastern German 
town only hours before it was handed over to Soviet forces. He oversaw 
the safe transfer of Nazi scientists, as well as American scientists, 
from one place to another. On one occasion, he found himself face-to-
face with a Nazi checkpoint, manned by an armed German crew, but 
escaped unharmed.
  Another mission that Reginald described as ``a grand climax to all 
Alsos operations in the war,'' was the seizure of a strategic German 
atomic research center near Stuttgart. Once the area had been secured, 
he escorted several captured German scientists to American territory, 
including Otto Hahn, discoverer of the nuclear fission principle, 
Nobelist Max von Laue, and physicists Karl Wirtz, Erich Bagge and Carl 
von Weizsacker.
  Robert Norris, author of the 2003 book Racing for the Bomb: General 
Leslie R. Groves, the Manhattan Project's Indispensable Man, noted that 
``Alsos was one of the most successful intelligence operations of the 
war.''
  Reginald was promoted to the rank of captain by the end of the war. 
He was decorated for his service, including the Bronze Star and Order 
of the British Empire, which he received personally from King George 
VI.
  After the war, he continued to serve his country for over two decades 
as a member of the Central Intelligence Agency. This included postings 
in Munich and Frankfurt during the 1950s and 60s, and to Saigon in 
1968.
  Reginald Augustine passed away on June 30 at the age of 97 and will 
be laid to rest today at Arlington Cemetery. He is an example of our 
nation's Greatest Generation of heroes that grew up during the 
Depression, responded to their country's call to arms during World War 
II, and continued to serve during the long Cold War against communism. 
As President Franklin D. Roosevelt described, ``This generation of 
Americans [had] a rendezvous with destiny.''
  Mr. Augustine is survived by his wife of 61 years, two daughters, two 
sons-in-law, and two grandchildren. We owe him and his family, as well 
as his generation, a debt of gratitude.

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