[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 160 (2014), Part 9]
[House]
[Page 13329]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                      THE GREAT WAR--100 YEARS AGO

  (Mr. POE of Texas asked and was given permission to address the House 
for 1 minute.)
  Mr. POE of Texas. Mr. Speaker, it was called the ``war to end all 
wars.'' It began on July 28, 1914, 100 years ago today. It concluded in 
1918, only after millions had died. It was just the first of many wars 
in the last century.
  It was at a stalemate in the bloody, deadly trenches of Europe in 
1917 when tenacious American Doughboys entered the battle. It was World 
War I.
  Over 100,000 young American warriors never returned. One was 
President Teddy Roosevelt's son, Quentin. Thousands more died from the 
Spanish flu that they contracted.
  The last American survivor was Frank Buckles, Jr., who lived to be 
110. I got to know Buckles, as did many other Members of Congress. His 
dying wish was that a memorial be erected on the Mall to honor all the 
Americans who fought in the Great War: those that returned, those that 
returned with the wounds of war, and those that did not return.
  It is unfortunate and tragic that a memorial has not been erected 
because, as it has been said, the worst casualty of war is to be 
forgotten.
  And that is just the way it is.

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