[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 12]
[Senate]
[Pages 16523-16524]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




 TRIBUTE TO GEN ALEXANDER ``SANDY'' PATCH AND THE 65TH ANNIVERSARY OF 
                           OPERATION DRAGOON

  Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I say to Mayor Bruno, residents of 
Ramatuelle, France, and especially to all the French and American 
veterans gathered for this important event, I am honored to lend my 
voice from afar to the chorus of those who celebrate the past, present, 
and future of the extraordinary bond between our two great nations.
  At watershed moments in history, France and America have always 
looked across the sea to each other in friendship and fidelity.
  When the British colonies reached their moment of truth, our Founding 
Fathers stood shoulder to shoulder with Marquis de Lafayette, Comte de 
Rochambeau, and countless other Frenchmen who never made it home. Many 
French were, as we would later say, ``present at the creation'' of the 
United States. And our great experiment, in turn, helped inspire the 
French to not just dream of, but actually take to the streets and 
demand, ``liberty, equality, and brotherhood'' for all of their own 
people and all of mankind.
  So when our military leaders came together to liberate France from 
Nazi Germany, we weren't inventing a new story from whole cloth. We 
were reaffirming a centuries-old friendship, giving new life to the 
timeless ideals we share and the recurrent sense on both sides of the 
ocean that the fates of our nations are forever linked.
  GEN Jean de Lattre de Tassigny, commander of the French forces in 
Operation Dragoon, used to tell a powerful story about a meeting with 
his American counterpart, GEN Alexander ``Sandy'' Patch. Unlike Sandy 
Patch, General de Lattre lived long enough after the war to reflect on 
his experiences.
  When Patch granted him the support he needed to take the fight to the 
Nazis, de Lattre wrote that, ``I suddenly saw the clear, grave eyes of 
the American commander soften. With hesitation that was full of 
shyness, he brought out his pocket-book and from it he took a flower 
with two stems, which was beginning to fade. `Look,' he

[[Page 16524]]

said, breaking it into two and handing me one of the stems, `a young 
girl gave me it on the slopes of Vesuvius on the day before we 
embarked. She said it would bring me luck. Let us each keep half and it 
will take our two armies side by side on the road to victory.' '' As 
the French General said, it was ``a touching wish which was answered by 
heaven.''
  General Patch's gift was the personal gesture of a man who was both 
great and gracious. It is also a fitting metaphor for the friendship of 
our two countries. Each helped freedom to flower in the other, and we 
are bound together by the enduring fact that we each carry a part of 
the same idea forward with us.
  GEN ``Sandy'' Patch--hero at Guadalcanal, liberator of southern 
France, whose troops would later cross the Rhine as victors--was a 
great American and a great admirer of the French people. Hailing from a 
small mining town in the western United States near the Mexican border, 
Patch described General de Lattre in a letter to his wife as ``a 
typical, intelligent, broadly educated, volatile and attractive 
Frenchman.'' But when the French emerged from their homes in the 
liberated town of Saint Raphael and began to sing their national 
anthem, which had been forbidden just days before, General Patch 
listened to ``La Marseillaise'' with tears streaming down his face.
  Although Patch was famously pugnacious as a young man, he grew into a 
man of remarkable personal discipline who remained unafraid of battle 
but who, as his biographer wrote, ``had a remarkable and brooding 
concern about the human cost'' of war.
  He was a man who shunned the spotlight. It is said that when General 
Patch saw himself hailed on the cover of Time magazine as ``Patch de 
Provence,'' he never even read the article. His own sense of humility 
inspired his subordinates to live up to the confidence he placed in 
them. He was not just respected by his fellow soldiers--he was loved. 
Smoking his rolled up ``Bull Durham'' cigarettes, he remained to his 
last days an American original and, as GEN Dwight Eisenhower 
memorialized him, ``a soldier's soldier.'' That is what he lived to be, 
and that is what he was.
  For a soldier's soldier who died of pneumonia just 2 days short of 
his 56th birthday, the landing here in southern France represented the 
culmination of his life's work.
  And what an accomplishment it was: Dragoon was a remarkable 
undertaking, and a great success. Coming as it did 6 weeks after Allied 
troops landed on the beaches of Normandy, operation Dragoon was one of 
the war's most poorly kept secrets. And yet it arrived with such 
overwhelming force that the Nazis could not resist it. 9,000 men 
arrived the first day by air, 77,000 by sea. By the third day, Hitler 
had instructed a few units to guard the ports and sent the rest of 
France's occupiers into retreat. He is said to have called August 15, 
the first day of Operation Dragoon, ``the worst day of my life.''
  By August 28, the port cities of Toulon and Marseilles had fallen, 
and within just one month our armies had covered almost 500 miles and 
captured nearly 100,000 German soldiers.
  Of course, none of this came easy. Many suffered for the great dream 
of a France that was once again free--of a Europe and a world free from 
fascism.
  Women like Marie-Madeleine Fourcade and Helene Vagliano who faced 
torture from the Germans for their role in the French resistance--but 
refused to reveal any information that would endanger those who shared 
their cause.
  Men like the French commandoes who landed miles away from the main 
invasion force and found themselves trapped in a minefield bravely 
resisting German fire.
  Men like French Sgt Noel Texier, who landed a rubber dinghy and began 
climbing the 100-meter high flat face of Cap Negre, only to fall to his 
death and become, as far as we can tell, the first casualty of 
Operation Dragoon.
  Young men like ``Mac'' Patch--General Patch's only son, who was 
christened Alexander Patch III but known to everyone as ``Mac.'' Mac 
Patch took a direct hit from a tank gun and died fighting for a free 
France.
  Tragically, while General de Lattre's only son, Bernard, would 
survive World War Two, he too died just 6 years later on the 
battlefields of Indochina. Both generals outlived their sons, but 
neither by very much. Neither man outlived the crush of grief that came 
after. With their sons in battle, I can assure you that General Patch 
and General de Lattre never forgot the cost of war--the price of 
freedom. And neither should we.
  And so with enormous pride for what these men accomplished and a 
heavy heart for all that they lost, we come together today to mark the 
anniversary of the signature achievement of a great generation of men 
and women. We come together to commemorate a high point of French-
American friendship, and to celebrate all that we won: the right to 
gather here today, the chance to raise our families in peace, and the 
right to walk as free people down free streets in a free France.
  On behalf of all Americans, I want to express my gratitude to the 
citizens of Ramatuelle for their commitment to honor this monument of 
liberation and for the bond forever cemented between us by the brave 
soldiers and citizens who stood together to make an eternal difference.

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