[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 12]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages 17413-17415]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




     SPECIAL MEMORIAL DAY WORDS OF INSPIRATION FROM FALLUJAH, IRAQ

                                 ______
                                 

                         HON. C. W. BILL YOUNG

                              of florida-

                    in the house of representatives

                        Wednesday, July 30, 2008

  Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Madam Speaker, Americans all over our Nation 
honored our fallen heroes for Memorial Day. We gathered in our national 
cemeteries, at veterans posts, and at town halls to say thank you to 
those who paid the ultimate price for freedom and to their families who 
suffered the greatest of losses.
  Many forget that today's heroes also celebrated Memorial Day in the 
far corners of the world, including the deserts of Iraq and the 
mountains of Afghanistan. One such Memorial Day ceremony took place in 
Fallujah, Iraq, the site of some of the fiercest fighting and where 
many of our troops gave their lives.
  Marine Corps Major General John F. Kelly led the service for our 
troops in Fallujah saying, ``There is something about looking out at 
real Americans who know the price paid for our protection, and the 
world's freedoms. Soldiers, sailors, airmen, Coast Guardsmen and 
Marines--heroes all.''
  General Kelly knows personally of service and sacrifice, as he is on 
his third tour of duty commanding Marines in Iraq, his third tour away 
from his family. He also has two sons serving as Marines in Iraq.
  General Kelly told his Marines, ``Our countrymen at home should be on 
their knees every day thanking God we still have enough young people in 
America today willing to take up the fight as our veterans did from the 
earliest days of our Nation. They should know that they are protected 
today by men and women as good as have ever served; as good today as 
their fathers were in Vietnam, and their grandfathers were in Korea and 
World War II. In this, my third tour in Iraq, I have never seen an 
American hesitate, or do anything other than lean into the danger and, 
with no apparent fear of death or injury, take the fight to the enemies 
of our way of life.''
  Those who serve make many sacrifices including having to endure the 
horror of war. As General Kelly told his troops, ``You are all heroes 
and like many veterans throughout our history, many of us have endured 
things--sights, sounds and horrors--that will haunt us for the rest of 
our lives. I know I find great comfort that because I am here those I 
love and have sworn to protect will never have to deal with memories so 
terrible. I hope you who have seen these things have the same sense of 
purpose and balance when you relive the scenes of violence, and of 
decisions made. America's Armed Forces today know the price of being 
the finest men and women this nation has to offer, and pay it we do 
every day in Iraq and Afghanistan.''
  Madam Speaker, following my remarks, I would like to include for the 
benefit of my colleagues the full text of General Kelly's letter to his 
Marines. It is from the heart and it is to the point of what every 
American service member and their families give to our Nation in the 
defense of freedom and liberty. General Kelly concludes his message by 
reading a letter no officer wants to write, that to the mother or 
father, husband or wife, brother or child of a fallen warrior. In this 
case it is to the mother of Jonathan Yale, a Marine who died protecting 
an Entry Control Point in Ramadi, Iraq from a suicide bomber driving a 
truck loaded with explosives. He and fellow Marine Jordan Haerter fired 
upon the truck until it exploded before breaching their security point. 
They both died during their job that day and in so doing saved the 
lives of 50 other Marines and countless Iraqi policemen.
  General Kelly wrote to Jonathan's mother, ``I have 25,000 Marines 
under my care here in Iraq, and I fear for their lives every minute of 
every day as if they were my own. They are out there every day and 
every night patrolling the most dangerous places on earth for millions 
of people at home they do not even know. In times of weakness I wonder 
why they come, young men like Jonathan, why they come when no one makes 
them. When everything in our society seems to say ``what's in it for 
me,'' those like your son think of others--not themselves.''
  Madam Speaker, it is my hope that every member of this House will 
read General Kelly's powerful and poignant words and take them to heart 
as we thank him and every American who goes into harm's way on a daily 
basis to protect us and our way of life.

                                                     May 25, 2008.

          Words From a Memorial Day Ceremony in Fallujah, Iraq

       Fallujah, Iraq.--Major General John F. Kelly dispatched a 
     letter from Iraq stating that they held their Memorial Day 
     ceremony in Fallujah today and it was inspiring.

[[Page 17414]]

       ``Something about looking out at real Americans who know 
     the price paid for our protection, and the world's freedoms. 
     Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Coast Guardsmen and Marines--
     heroes all,'' Kelly said.
       The General continued: ``First, a few statistics to ponder. 
     There are twenty-five million living American Veterans. Since 
     General George Washington commanded the Continental Army, 
     forty-two million Americans have served the colors.
       A million have been killed in its defense. Another million 
     and a half wounded. When most of us think about military 
     cemeteries the first thought that comes to mind is Arlington 
     National in Washington, but there are many, many more in the 
     U.S.
       Most Americans also don't know there are 24 American 
     cemeteries maintained overseas with 125,000 graves of our 
     fallen--61,000 in France alone--the result of two wars that 
     saved Europe and the world from horrors unimaginable to 
     Americans today; unimaginable, that is, unless you are a 
     Veteran who has seen the terrible face of war so those who 
     remained safe in America, and those yet unborn, would never 
     have to.
       There are also memorials overseas to an additional 94,000 
     Americans who were lost at sea, or their remains never 
     recovered from battlefields around the globe. With all this 
     service and loss, we as Americans can be proud of the kind of 
     people we are as we have never retained a square foot of any 
     country we have defeated, we possess no empire, nor have we 
     enslaved a single human being.
       On the contrary, billions across the planet are today--and 
     billions yet unborn--live free because our Veterans have 
     fought and died, and, once peace achieved, we've rebuilt 
     destroyed cities, economies, and societies.
       Memorial Day was established three years after our terrible 
     Civil War that finally established what kind of nation we 
     would be. A war in which 600,000 young Americans--North and 
     South--perished. For a century the day continued to mean 
     visiting and decorating graves or town-square memorials to 
     those who died serving our great nation, and celebrating with 
     parades and civic events.
       Americans kept the day quiet, pausing to remember, at least 
     for a little while, the kind of men and women they were who 
     gave the last full measure, and the immensity of the 
     sacrifice they made for those who remained protected at home.
       Americans should not forget this weekend or any weekend as 
     they relax with a few days off that the country is at war, 
     and a new Greatest Generation is fighting a merciless enemy 
     on their behalf in the terrible heat of Iraq, and in the 
     mountains of Afghanistan. Like it or not America is engaged 
     in a war today against an enemy that is savage, offers no 
     quarter, whose only objectives are to either kill every one 
     of our families in our homeland, or enslave us with a sick 
     form of extremism that serves no God or purpose that rational 
     men and women can understand.
       Given the opportunity to do another 9/11, our vicious enemy 
     would do it today, tomorrow and every day thereafter. I don't 
     know why they hate us, and I frankly don't care and they can 
     all go to hell, but they do hate us and are driven 
     irrationally to our destruction. The best way to fight them 
     is somewhere else and that is why we are here. For whatever 
     reason they want to destroy our way of life, our countrymen 
     at home should be on their knees every day thanking God we 
     still have enough young people in America today willing to 
     take up the fight as our Veterans did from the earliest days 
     of our nation.
       They should know that they are protected today by men and 
     women as good as have ever served; as good today as their 
     fathers were in Vietnam, and their grandfathers were in Korea 
     and World War II. In this my third tour in Iraq I have never 
     seen an American hesitate, or do anything other than lean 
     into the danger and, with no apparent fear of death or 
     injury, take the fight to the enemies of our way of life.
       As anyone who has ever experienced combat knows, and many 
     of you do, when it starts, when the explosions and tracers 
     are everywhere and the calls for the Corpsman or medic are 
     screamed from the throats of men who know they are dying--
     when seconds seem like hours and it all becomes slow motion 
     and fast forward at the same time--everything in one's 
     survival instinct says stop, get down, save yourself--yet you 
     don't.
       When no one would call you coward for cowering behind a 
     wall or in a hole looking to your own self preservation, none 
     of you do. It doesn't matter if it's an IED, a suicide 
     bomber, mortar attack, fighting in the upstairs room of a 
     house, or all of it at once--America should know you fight 
     today in the same way our warriors have since the Revolution.
       The wonderful thing about America's Armed Forces is that 
     none of us are born killers. On the contrary we are good and 
     decent Americans mostly from the neighborhoods of America's 
     cities, and small towns. Almost all come from ``salt of the 
     earth'' working class homes, and more often than not are the 
     sons and daughters of cops and firemen, factory and service 
     workers, and farmers.
       Most of us delivered papers, stocked shelves in the grocery 
     store, played Little League baseball and pickup hockey in the 
     local rink, and served Mass on Sunday morning. Some are 
     former athletes, and many ``couch potatoes'' who drove our 
     cars and motorcycles too fast, and blasted our music louder 
     than perhaps we should have.
       We are all ordinary people performing remarkable acts of 
     bravery and selfless acts of devotion to a cause bigger than 
     ourselves--and for millions who will never know our names. 
     Any one of us could have all stayed in school or gone another 
     way, but yet we chose to serve knowing full well Iraq and 
     Afghanistan was in our future. You did not avoid the most 
     basic and cherished responsibility of a citizen--to defend 
     the nation and its people--on the contrary, you went after 
     it.
       You did not fail in life, which the chattering class back 
     home likes to believe is why you chose to serve and risk 
     dying for the nation, but, rather, are the best our nation 
     produces and have consciously put every American at home 
     above your own self interest. You are all heroes and like 
     many Veterans throughout our history many of us have endured 
     things--sights, sounds and horrors--that will haunt us for 
     the rest of our lives.
       I know I find comfort that because I am here those I love 
     and have sworn to protect will never have to deal with 
     memories so terrible. I hope you who have seen these things 
     have the same sense of purpose and balance when you relive 
     the scenes of violence, and of decisions made. America's 
     Armed Forces today know the price of being the finest men and 
     women this nation has to offer, and pay it we do every day in 
     Iraq and Afghanistan.
       More than four thousand of us have died in this war, and 
     ten-times this number have been wounded. And the sacrifice 
     continues as young Americans have gone to God since we all 
     went to bed last night and slept free and protected.
       Their mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, wives, 
     husbands, and fiances are sitting in their living rooms right 
     now with casualty officers learning the true price of 
     freedom, and are only just beginning a lifelong struggle of 
     dealing with the pain and loss of someone so dear, but they 
     are not victims as they knew what they were about and were 
     doing what they wanted to do.
       Many of today's self-proclaimed experts and media 
     commentators endeavor to make them out to be victims but they 
     are wrong, and this only detracts from the decision these 
     patriots made to step forward and protect the country that 
     has given so much to all of us. We who are serving, and have 
     served, demand not to be categorized as victims--we are not.
       Those with less of a sense of service to the nation never 
     understand it when strong and committed men and women stand 
     tall and firm against our enemies, just as they can't begin 
     to understand the price paid so they and their families can 
     sleep safe and free at night--the protected never do.
       What the experts, commentators, and elites are missing, 
     what they will also never understand, is the sense of 
     commitment, joy, and honor, of serving the nation in its 
     uniform, but every American Veteran, and their loved ones who 
     support them and fear for them every day, do understand.
       We should all be confident that this experiment in 
     democracy we call America will forever remain the ``land of 
     the free and home of the brave'' so long as we never run out 
     of tough young Americans willing to look beyond their own 
     self interest and comfortable lives, and go into the darkest 
     and most dangerous places on earth to hunt down, and kill, 
     those who would do us harm.
       In closing I wanted to share a story that you may not be 
     aware of that took place only a few miles from here in 
     Ramadi. On 22 April 2nd Battalion 8th Marines and 1st 
     Battalion, 9th Marines were in the process of turning over a 
     Joint Security Station Nasser.
       It's in the Sophia district of Ramadi, and was once the 
     center of the insurgency in that city. Two Marines who barely 
     knew each other as one was coming and the other going were 
     standing guard at the Entry Control Point (ECP): their names 
     were Jonathan Yale and Jordan Haerter.
       At 0745, and without warning, a large truck accelerated 
     towards the ECP, careening off the protective serpentine. 
     Both must have understood on instinct what was happening as 
     in less then a second they went to the guns and opened fire 
     until the massive 2,000 lb blast took their lives--but the 
     suicide bomber never passed the post they protected, and 50 
     other Marines and perhaps as many police didn't die that day 
     inside the JSS.
       I spoke to several Iraqi police eyewitnesses and they all 
     told the same story, but one more emotionally than the 
     others.
       He said no sane man would have stood there directly in the 
     path of a speeding truck firing their weapons--yet two did. 
     His officers, some as close as ten feet initially from the 
     Marines, fired and ran when it was obvious the truck could 
     not be stopped--and they survived. The Marines stood their 
     ground and stopped the truck before it detonated, and saved 
     the lives of their buddies.
       A sacred duty of every commander in combat, yet the one we 
     dread the most, is writing letters home to families who have 
     lost a son or a daughter. I wanted to close by reading you a 
     letter I wrote that night to the

[[Page 17415]]

     mother of one of those two heroes that for me sums up who and 
     what we are as warriors and Veterans, why we serve, and how 
     we will remember each other.''
                                  ____

                                                    22 April 2008.
       I know there is nothing I can write tonight that will help 
     you deal with the loss of your son Jonathan. I do hope you 
     can find some comfort as I try to help you understand what he 
     was doing for every American when he was taken from us all. 
     He was standing watch on a nameless side street in Ramadi at 
     the entrance of a compound that housed a large number of 
     Marines, Iraqi Police, and civilians. In the early morning a 
     truck turned down towards the entrance and ignored the visual 
     warnings he gave to stop. Jonathan and the Marine he was with 
     must have sensed immediately what was taking place as they 
     went to the guns quickly and fired a very high volume of 
     automatic weapons fire, undoubtedly killing the suicide 
     driver, but not before he detonated the massive blast that 
     took their lives. His fellow Marines did what Marines have 
     done from the beginning of our history, something they do 
     almost without thinking and always without hesitation--they 
     risked their own lives to save his, but he was already gone 
     to God. Mrs. Pride, because of your son and that other 
     Marine, nearly fifty other American families are not mourning 
     tonight; their sons' lives were saved by two Marines who 
     would not abandon their post even to the point of death.
       I did not know your son, Mrs. Pride, but I am sure he was 
     just like every Marine I have known in the three decades and 
     more that I have served. Like my own two sons who are Marines 
     and have served here in this war, I bet he was a good looking 
     young man, fun loving, into sports and a good son--but not 
     perfect--boys never are. He was also different, Mrs. Pride, 
     because he chose to leave the comfortable and safe confines 
     of his home and walk a different path than all the rest. The 
     path he chose led him to be one of the nation's finest, to be 
     a Marine. When he did not have to raise his right hand and 
     swear before his God to serve and protect this nation and its 
     people, he did just that. We all owe him an eternal debt of 
     gratitude that can never be repaid. We also owe you, Tammy, 
     and all who loved him a debt--one that can never be settled.
       I have 25,000 Marines under my care here in Iraq, and I 
     fear for their lives every minute of every day as if they 
     were my own. They are out there every day and every night 
     patrolling the most dangerous places on earth for millions of 
     people at home they do not even know. In times of weakness I 
     wonder why they come, young men like Jonathan, why they come 
     when no one makes them. When everything in our society seems 
     to say ``what's in it for me,'' those like your son think of 
     others--not themselves. I did not know your son, Mrs. Pride, 
     but I will never forget him. I will keep him in my thoughts 
     and prayers for the rest of my life.
           With deepest sympathy,
         Major General John F. Kelly, U.S. Marine Corps, 
           Commanding General, I Marine Expeditionary Force 
           (Forward).

                          ____________________