Date: 1996-09-12
Speaker: SAM JOHNSON (republican)
Chamber: H

I will be back next week with 5 more days gone. 12. that is 17. so that means 13 days in this 30day month. 31 next. that is 44. When we come back in for legislative business. there will be 49 days left in the presidential election. 49 days before GIL GuTKNEcirr rides to glory with a 60. 70 percent election up there in Gods country in the northwest of our great country. middle northwest it should be called now. Mr. Speaker. here is why this is so important to me. all these scandals. It is because we are faced with a constitutional crisis right now. Last Sunday. a few days ago I was in my district. I went to the back of the church. St. Columbans. great Irish saint that turned wild bluefaced Picts in Scotland into Christians. brought the word of Christ to Scotland with St. Kevin and St. Columba. But this is Columban. In St. Columbans ii Garden Grove. CA. at the back of the church is a plaque and it says on the plaque that these men. the following. died in the service of their country in the war in Vietnam. And it lists six names and then it says. may their souls repose in peace. or words to that effect. I said to my wife. it is time for me to write down these names and go to the Vietnam Memorial at -the kiosk. because I had done this at Cambridge. England to look at Colonel Eugene Holmes kid brother. Bob. as I mentioned earlier who. and last week I mentioned him. who had died from his wounds at altitude. German fighter aircraft and flak tearing up the B17. died of his wounds on the aircraft. but the aircraft made it safely back to his base and he was buried the next day on Veterans Day of 1943. The air war had been canceled over Germany because we were losing so many airplanes. 2 raids. we lost six fourengine ten- or 11man crewed bombers over Schreinford and then RegensburgSchreinford. So we ended the air war from October. so he must have been hit over France. We did not start up again until February. We started. We could still lose the air war. Germans had not even put their jets in the field yet. But since I have looked up and I had forgotten how easy is to get a mans date of death and birth and age. so forth. and I took down these 6 names and my Sally reminded me yesterday. So I could not get off the floor so I sent a staffer down to the Vietnamese Memorial. Within minutes he was back with their names. I mean the barest of statistics on their death. Here they are. In my parish church. here is the names of six young Americans who died serving their country in Vietnam. I will make a point on this. J. Patrick Fitzsimmons. lance corporal Marine Corps. died a month past his 21st birthday. May 18. 1967. he was born in 1946. I guess that is the beginning of the baby boom. His dad was probably a veteran who came home from the war and count back 9 months from 1946 and that is certainly a child brought into the world at the end of our vict6rious allied effort of World War II. George Xavier Rocha. private first class. born February 3. 1946. He was conceived after the war in Europe ended. the very month. yE day. May of 1945. Birthday February 3. 1946. Died 21 years old. 10 and a half months. on December 18 of 1967. Bill Clinton is starting his 3 months into his senior year at Georgetown. getting ready to use graduate school to avoid his first draft notice which. by the way. was not right because graduate school deferments ended in 1967. Then David Simmons. born in Grand Rapids but died as a citizen of Garden GroFe. sergeant. Army. date of birth. August 16. 1944. Probably his dad home on leave. He died March 16. 1968. 23 years and one month to the day. Patrick F. Scharosch. spec 4. U.S. Army. born December 18. 1945. war had been over just a few months when his mother went into labor and brought him into what looked like a very promising world. Christmas of 1945. the world at peace for the first time in six horrible bloodletting years. 55 million dead in all the extended families with broken hearts that their loved son or daughter. in the case of European Jewry. the whole extended families gone up literally in evil smoke from Hitlers crematoria. He died April 15. 1968. I know exactly where I was that day. on the way to Vietnam as a reporter. He was 22 years. 4 months. J. Michael Foster. another marine. corporal. he was born on VE day itself. May 8. 1945. In between his mothers birth pangs. no TV in the hospital rooms then. but I am sure proud dad and brothers and sisters bringing her newspapers. the war is over in Europe. Well. it ended the day before. it ended on the sixth. Ike took the unconditional surrender. would not even show up. he so disrespected General Yodal and then declared May 8 the VE day. Some prisoners were still dying. Some people liberated in camps were still dying but at least they knew freedom. breathed free for a day or two before their emaciated bodies gave up their souls to God and in Russian camps that had been overrun. U.S. prisoners. I repeated from earlier. those with the Slavic names died in the Gulag camps over the next decade. Let me please give this last name. Mr. Speaker. J. Michael Foster. died March 24. 1969. 23 years. 10 months and. thank you for the courtesy of the one officer. major. Marine Corps. Robert M.