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Floor Speech

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Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, last week, America and Illinois lost a hero. Lorenzo Cervantes was his name. He had been a steelworker living in the small town of Sterling, IL, in the Rock River Valley. That is an hour or two west of Chicago.

Mr. Cervantes was 98 years old. When he was a young man, he set out to save the world. He joined the U.S. Army in February of 1943, during World War II, before he had reached the age of 20. He was a member of an elite group. There was an American-Canadian commando unit known as the First Special Service Force, a top-secret band of brothers operating deep behind enemy lines.

The Forcemen, as they were known, earned the nickname ``The Devil's Brigade'' from terrified Nazi soldiers and officers who said that they seemed to appear out of nowhere in the dead of night, like devils.

That unit he served in suffered one of the highest casualty rates in the war. Listen to these figures. Of the 2,400 men who fought with the unit, 2,300 of them were either killed or wounded, but they never lost a mission--not one.

The First Special Service Force existed for only 2 years, but the spirit of that force lives on in the Green Berets, Army Rangers, Navy SEALS, Marine Raiders, Canadian Special Operations Regiment, and, frankly, all of today's military Special Forces.

For decades after World War II, the very existence of that unit remained top secret and classified. The Forcemen didn't tell anyone what they had done in the war, not even their families. Like Lorenzo Cervantes, they quietly returned home, married, raised families, and lived ordinary lives.

In 2015, some 70 years after the end of World War II, they were finally honored for their service, and Congress awarded them the Congressional Gold Medal.

I had the privilege of meeting two other Forcemen from Illinois at that Gold Medal ceremony. Casey Celske was one of them. He fought with the Devil's Brigade at the Battle of Anzio--one of the Allies' greatest surprise victories. He was among the first Allied soldiers to enter Rome and liberate it from the Nazis.

Mr. Celske died 3 years ago, also age 98. After the war, he had returned to Illinois and married. He and his wife had 11 children--11.

In 1995, 50 years after the war ended, Mr. Celske and one of his sons decided to go back to Europe to take a look and see the places where the First Special Service Force had fought and to visit the towns that the Force liberated.

Near the Anzio beachhead, they spoke to an Italian man. When the man realized who they were, he dropped to his knees, broke out in tears, and thanked Casey Celske of Illinois.

The Italian man said to his son: This is one of the soldiers who saved our village.

Casey Celske turned to his son and said: All these years, I wondered what I was doing. Now I know.

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