It wasn't suicide was it?
Quite a hero, may he rest in peace.
Died of natural causes at 88? Not another Arkansas "suicide by shotgun blast to the back of the head"?
I talked to Col. Holmes on Christmas eve, of '97. He was quite well and active. Had a strong voice and a sharp mind.
Col. Holmes Notarized Statement
As Entered in Congressional Record (Page: H5551) 7/30/93
September 7, 1992. Memorandum for Record:
Subject: Bill Clinton and the University of Arkansas ROTC Program:
There have been many unanswered questions as to the circumstances surrounding Bill Clinton's involvement with the ROTC department at the University of Arkansas. Prior to this time I have not felt the necessity for discussing the details. The reason I have not done so before is that my poor physical health (a consequence of participation in the Bataan Death March and the subsequent three and a half years interment in Japanese POW camps) has precluded me from getting into what I felt was unnecessary involvement. However, present polls show that there is the imminent danger to our country of a draft dodger becoming Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the United States. While it is true, as Mr. Clinton has stated, that there were many others who avoided serving their country in the Vietnam war, they are not aspiring to be the President of the United States.
The tremendous implications of the possibility of his becoming Commander-in-Chief of the United States Armed Forces compels me now to comment on the facts concerning Mr. Clinton's evasion of the draft. This account would not have been imperative had Bill Clinton been completely honest with the American public concerning this matter. But as Mr. Clinton replied on a news conference this evening (September 5, 1992) after being asked another particular about his dodging the draft,
"Almost everyone concerned with these incidents are dead. I have no more comments to make".
Since I may be the only person living who can give a first hand account of what actually transpired, I am obligated by my love for my country and my sense of duty to divulge what actually happened and make it a matter of record.
Bill Clinton came to see me at my home in 1969 to discuss his desire to enroll in the ROTC program at the University of Arkansas. We engaged in an extensive, approximately two (2) hour interview. At no time during this long conversation about his desire to join the program did he inform me of his involvement, participation and actually organizing protests against the United States involvement in South East Asia. He was shrewd enough to realize that had I been aware of his activities, he would not have been accepted into the ROTC program as a potential officer in the United States Army.
The next day I began to receive phone calls regarding Bill Clinton's draft status. I was informed by the draft board that it was of interest to Senator Fullbright's office that Bill Clinton, a Rhodes Scholar, should be admitted to the ROTC program. I received several such calls. The general message conveyed by the draft board to me was that Senator Fullbright's office was putting pressure on them and that they needed my help. I then made the necessary arrangements to enroll Mr. Clinton into the ROTC program at the University of Arkansas.
I was not "saving" him from serving his country, as he erroneously thanked me for in his letter from England (dated December 3, 1969). I was making it possible for a Rhodes Scholar to serve in the military as an officer. In retrospect I see that Mr. Clinton had no intention of following through with his agreement to join the Army ROTC program at the University of Arkansas or to attend the University of Arkansas Law School. I had explained to him the necessity of enrolling at the University of Arkansas as a student in order to be eligible to take the ROTC program at the University. He never enrolled at the University of Arkansas, but instead enrolled at Yale after attending Oxford. I believe that he purposely deceived me, using the possibility of joining the ROTC as a ploy to work with the draft board to delay his induction and get a new draft classification.
The December 3rd letter written to me by Mr. Clinton, and subsequently taken from the files by Lt. Col. Clint Jones, my executive officer, was placed into the ROTC files so that a record would be available in case the applicant should again petition to enter the ROTC program. The information in that letter alone would have restricted Bill Clinton from ever qualifying to be an officer in the United States Military. Even more significant was his lack of veracity in purposefully defrauding the military by deceiving me, both in concealing his anti-military activities overseas and his counterfeit intentions for later military service. These actions cause me to question both his patriotism and his integrity. When I consider the caliber, the bravery, and the patriotism of the fine young soldiers whose deaths I have witnessed, and others whose funerals I have attended.... When I reflect on not only the willingness but eagerness that so many of them displayed in their earnest desire to defend and serve their country, it is untenable and incomprehensible to me that a man who was not merely unwilling to serve his country, but actually protested against its military, should ever be in the position of Commander-in-Chief of our armed Forces.
I write this declaration not only for the living and future generations, but for those who fought and died for our country. If space and time permitted I would include the names of the ones I knew and fought with, and along with them I would mention my brother Bob, who was killed during World War II and is buried in Cambridge, England (at the age of 23, about the age Bill Clinton was when he was over in England protesting the war). I have agonized over whether or not to submit this statement to the American people. But, I realize that even though I served my country by being in the military for over 32 years, and having gone through the ordeal of months of combat under the worst of conditions followed by years of imprisonment by the Japanese, it is not enough. I'm writing these comments to let everyone know that I love my country more than I do my own personal security and well-being. I will go to my grave loving these United States of America and the liberty for which so many men have fought and died. Because of my poor physical condition this will be my final statement. I will make no further comments to any of the media regarding this issue.
Eugene Holmes
Colonel, U.S.A., Ret.
September 1992
Had his affidavit not been suppressed by the Jacki before
the first election-I would not have been so stupid to give the freaking draft dodger a chance.I did Not make the same
mistake twice. And the day after Clinton announced don't ask don't tell I recieved the Col.Holmes affidavit. I ceased to be a registered Democrat that day.will Never be so stupid again
A survivor of the Bataan Death March in World War II versus disbarred, impeached Bill Clinton. Now who do you suppose has more credibility?
Dear Bill and Hillary,
There's a lot of other people still living that know the real truth about you.
Senator Fullbright's name appears yet again regarding anti-war activism. He was Skerry's voice in the 71 hearings.
"Retired Army Col. Eugene J. Holmes died of natural causes at his Fayetteville home Saturday,"
I didn't know arkancide was a natural cause of death. You learn something new every day.
Bataan death march= American hero
bookmark bump
I admire Col. Holmes' courage and candor. About Clinton, no comment.
If you think the MSM isn't liberal.
Compare the time spent on Clinton's draft dodging in 1992 to the amount of time spent on GWB,s national guard service.
And of course every MSM type spent 2004 comparing Bush to their Hero Kerry.
Dont remember those comparisons in 1992.
http://www.washtimes.com/national/
Man who exposed Clinton's draft dodging is buried
From combined dispatches
Col. Eugene J. Holmes, whose disclosure of how Bill Clinton avoided the draft during the Vietnam War threatened his 1992 presidential candidacy, was buried yesterday in Fayetteville, Ark. He died Saturday at 88.
Col. Holmes, a survivor of the Bataan Death March in World War II, was the director of the ROTC program at the University of Arkansas in 1969 when Mr. Clinton, then a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University in England, applied for an ROTC slot that would exempt him from the Vietnam War draft.
But after he drew a high number in the draft lottery, making it highly unlikely that his Hot Springs draft board would call him to duty, he dropped out of the ROTC program and stayed in England to study. He subsequently dropped plans to enroll in law school at Arkansas and instead studied law at Yale.
The young Mr. Clinton said he had considered avoiding the draft by becoming a conscientious objector.
"The decision not to be a resister and the related subsequent decisions were the most difficult of my life," he wrote to the colonel. "I decided to accept the draft in spite of my beliefs for one reason only, to maintain my political viability within the system ... . I had no interest in the ROTC program itself, and all I seem to have done was to protect myself from physical harm. ... I am writing, too, in the hope that my telling this one story will help you understand more clearly how so many fine people have come to find themselves loving their country but loathing the military."
The existence of the letter was disclosed early in 1992 during the New Hampshire primary, as Mr. Clinton, then the governor of Arkansas, seemed to be gaining ground.
Col. Holmes said Mr. Clinton, as a student, had deliberately deceived him.
"I believe that he purposely deceived me," the colonel said, "using the possibility of joining the ROTC as a ploy to work with the draft board to delay his induction and get a new draft classification."
The full text of the letter was made public later in 1992 during the general election campaign. A copy of the letter was given to aides to the first President Bush, running for re-election, who prepared a speech denouncing the deception to be delivered to a National Guard Association meeting in Salt Lake City in early October. But the speech was never delivered.
David Tell, who was the research director for Mr. Bush, told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette that he remembers being "vaguely disappointed" by what Col. Holmes had to say.
"It was no 'eureka' document. If you were looking for something to explode Clinton's future political chances, this wasn't it."
The Clinton campaign held a different view. Several aides were said to be close to panic on the night before they thought Mr. Bush would deliver the speech.
Years later, Mr. Bush told a friend: "I got good advice, and I got bad advice. I took the bad advice."
But there was no talk of politics yesterday at the funeral service for the colonel at the University Baptist Church in Fayetteville. The Rev. H.D. McCarty praised the colonel's heroic service in the Philippines in the early days of World War II, when he won the Purple Heart, the Bronze Star and the Silver Star for service as the outnumbered American forces held out against the Japanese on the Bataan Peninsula and on Corregidor, a heavily fortified island in Manila Bay.
He was one of 12,000 Americans and a much larger number of Filipinos who started the march from Mariveles, on the southern tip of the peninsula, 55 miles north to San Fernando. About 9,000 Americans arrived a week later. They had no food and were forced to drink from muddy puddles along the way. Col. Holmes was bayoneted twice, and his men carried him on a litter part of the way. Stragglers among the 3,000 who did not make it were shot, some were beheaded, and some were buried alive in graves they were forced to dig.
Col. Holmes was freed after nearly four years at Camp O'Donnell, as the Americans called their concentration camp, and with his back pay bought his wife, Irene, roses every day for the next six months.
He was assigned to the ROTC unit at the university in 1968, moving to Arkansas from California. He picked the Fayetteville assignment to be near a relative in Joplin, Mo., who was ill.
"Daddy was the kind of man who every little boy wants to grow up to be like, and every old man wishes he had been," his daughter, Linda Burnett of Fayetteville, said yesterday.
His family had gathered by his bedside in the hour before his death, and Mrs. Burnett sang his favorite hymn, "Jesus, the Name Above All Names."
"I said to him right before he died, 'Daddy, the victory has been won, the battle is over. You can let go now.' He was a fighter until the very last minute."
God Bless you, Col. Eugene Holmes. May you rest in peace.