Ambassador Whitney's speech on Veterans Day 2008
U.S. Embassy, November 7
General Bull Hansen, Rear Admiral Bruun-Hanssen, members of the Norwegian Resistance, men and women in uniform, both past and present,
I am so very proud to stand before you today as we honor veterans - soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines, both in the US and Norway - who have served in our nations’ armed forces.
We are here in rightful observance of this Veterans Day, so that we never forget the sacrifices made by previous generations and the value of what that sacrifice procured. That we never forget that some of these veterans paid the ultimate price – with their lives.
No better words can describe the significance and sacrifice of all those in military service than the inscription at Normandy Beach which reads:
These endured all and gave all
that justice among nations might prevail
and that mankind might enjoy freedom and inherit peace.
I want to focus on an event that took place years before Normandy…. in Norway in April, 1940. German troops had poured into Norway by land and sea. German airplanes filled the skies above this once neutral nation. U.S. Ambassador Florence Harriman was evacuating American staff and families from her embassy in Oslo. Known to her friends as “Daisy,” the 69 year old Ambassador was only the second woman in American diplomatic history to be appointed to ministerial rank.
U.S. Army Captain Robert Losey had received orders to assist the Ambassador in the evacuation. Losey was an Iowa born son of a traveling preacher. Young and brilliant, he graduated from West Point, and earned two master’s degrees while serving as a meteorological officer in California. He married his first love, Kay, and then achieved his lifelong dream – he became an Army flier, then military attaché to Finland.
Captain Losey caught up with Ambassador Harriman and some of the embassy families just across the Norwegian border in central Sweden. The remainder of the families was still missing in a second convoy. After an initial brief journey back into Norway by Losey did not locate the party, he and the Ambassador discussed making a second trip further west, using her official car draped with a large American flag in hopes prowling German planes would spare the vehicle of a still neutral power.
In her 1944 memoir, “Mission to the North” Ambassador Harriman described an encounter where she and Captain Losey argued whether she should accompany him or he should go alone. The remarkable picture behind me records this exchange beside the car.
“You might be bombed,” he argued; “the Germans are strafing the roads.” “But so might you,” Harriman replied, “and that would be the worse, for you are young and have your life before you, while I have had a wonderful life and nearly all of it behind me.” Captain Losey, the military professional, would have none of it, and finally convinced her that he must go alone. He swiftly drove back west through the still frozen mountains, eventually loading the car on a train to speed his passage.
On April 21, 1941, the train with Losey’s flag-draped car arrived at the rail center of Dombås. German bombers appeared threateningly overhead, the train slowed and stopped, and the passengers ran into a nearby tunnel. Swooping down, the German bombers dropped their deadly payload. Captain Losey, too, had headed into the tunnel. But as a trained air officer doing his duty, he lingered about 30 feet from the tunnel mouth making observations. A bomb suddenly exploded nearby, showering fragments into the tunnel. One piece found its deadly mark, hitting Captain Losey directly in the heart.
And so fell the very first American military casualty in all of World War II….in Dombås, Norway. And as would be repeated hundreds of thousands of times over the next four years, fellow soldiers delivered the tragic news to his young widow, Kay, who collapsed in grief at her loss – loss of the first fallen.
Following a memorial service in Sweden for Captain Losey, Ambassador Harriman wrote, “all our hearts ached for the young wife in California who must go on without him. She will be hearing the war correspondent on the radio in America, telling of the service; she will read the beautiful tributes to him in the American press; she will have the picture of the friends of his last winter, who mourned him in the North.” Kay would have all that, but not her beloved husband.
On this Veterans Day, we, the living beneficiaries of Captain Losey’s sacrifice, and the sacrifice of all veterans, living and dead, must ask what we owe in their memory. We honor them by teaching our children what Captain Losey knew – that in a world where evil still exists, freedom is worth fighting for. That the measure of life is not length or possessions, but service for humanity that leads to justice and peace.
As the past so clearly reminds us, the demands of the future will be great. May the honored service of veterans, Norwegian and American, bring our citizens the courage to protect our nations and our values. On this Veterans Day, let us stand together with resolution to overcome the challenges of this new century, jointly looking into a brighter future, one of shared prosperity and of national friendship.
To do so is to honor the memory of Captain Losey and all those American and Norwegian patriots whose dedicated service brought us here today. For their greatest legacy is to remind us that our democratic nations, forged by war, must endure undiminished to truly protect peace, preserve justice and assure our freedoms for the generations to come.
Thank you.