Clinton Honors Veterans Killed in War

Under gray skies at Arlington National Cemetery, President Clinton paid a Veterans Day tribute Thursday to the nation’s war dead. “We owe them a debt we can never repay,” he said.

A chilly wind kept the American flags waving in the porticoes of the amphitheater where Clinton spoke to about 800 veterans and their families after laying a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns.

Clinton highlighted a new military spending bill as proof of his commitment to “the best-trained, best-equipped, best-prepared” military in the world. He also announced that the remains of three men who were listed as missing in action in the Korean War would be returned to U.S. soil Thursday night.

A military honor guard lined the driveway as the president’s motorcade entered the cemetery and passed by rows of plain white headstones. Ceremonial cannon blasts reverberated off the hills.

“When the 20th century began, the headstones that stand in silent formation on these beautiful hills covered fewer than 200 acres,” Clinton said. “Today, at century’s end, they cover more than 600 acres.”

The Veterans of Foreign Wars honor guard, dressed in white, marched to the front of the audience as the Army Band played a martial tune.

Separately, Transportation Secretary Rodney Slater posthumously awarded the Purple Heart to 111 Coast Guardsmen who died aboard the cutter Tampa in 1918. The Tampa was sunk by a German U-boat off the British coast after escorting a supply convoy.

Elsewhere in Washington, a soldier campaigning for a planned World War II monument completed a 1,500-mile walk from Mobile, Ala., to the nation’s capital. Army Command Sgt. Maj. Ronald Bedford left 71 days ago for the walk, which he made to help raise money and draw attention to the planned monument.

At the Vietnam Memorial, about 80 Vietnamese commandos who ran secret intelligence missions for the United States but were denied veteran status by the Pentagon held a protest. Dressed in fatigues and green berets, the former commandos, many of whom spent years in prisoner-of-war camps in North Vietnam, carried banners that read, “Why not us?”

In New York, about 1,000 people marched down Fifth Avenue in a parade. Among them were a veterans service group known as Rolling Thunder, whose members rode gleaming motorcycles, and Long Island’s Rough Riders, who rode horses.

Clinton said that most of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s sorties flown over Kosovo were flown by U.S. pilots, with no fatalities. “That is a tribute to the professionalism we see every day from our military forces all around the world,” he said.