Pete Sessions: “on another subject, and the primary purpose of my being here this afternoon is to talk about the issue of tritium. It…”

“on another subject, and the primary purpose of my being here this afternoon is to talk about the issue of tritium. It was a much debated issue in the Armed Services Committee bill. I thank the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Senator Strom Thurmond, for his outstanding leadership, his commitment to this country and his dedication to America. He, at age 40, volunteered to fight--he was a judge--he forced his way into World War II, went off to Europe and volunteered on D-Day not just to land, he volunteered to get in one of the glider planes that they pulled up and let go and flew over the enemy lines and landed who knows where, in Belgium or somewhere near, to form commando groups to assist in the invasion effort. Senator Thurmond recounted, when they asked him how rough the landing was, ``Well, I'll just say you didn't have to open the door, you could just walk out the side of the plane.'' It is kind of hard to land one of those things in hedgerows and who knows what else when they are coming down. He served his country. I asked him, ``What happened after the surrender of Germany? Were you there all the way to the surrender, Strom?'' He said, ``Yes,'' he was there until the day of the surrender, and then he was put on a train and sent to the Pacific, but Japan surrendered before he reached the battlefront in the Pacific.”