Though fresh off a resounding re-election victory, U.S. Congressman Trent Kelly shied away from talking politics Thursday when he spoke to Columbus Exchange Club at Lion Hills Center.
Instead, in honor of Veterans Day, he shared the story of a 102-year-old World War II veteran he recently met. The man was part of a high-casualty operation in North Africa.
“He was in Operation Torch,” said Kelly, who represents Mississippi’s 1st Congressional District. “That was when we invaded North Africa. This gentleman was in Patton’s unit. Patton left them in a gap. He put them in the place and said ‘Rommel’s got to attack you here. You’re too strong for him to leave you and bypass you. He’s got to attack you.’ He told this entire unit, basically, you have a die in place mission. … This man was one of those men.”
The unnamed veteran survived the mission, Kelly said, but the Germans took him prisoner. He escaped from three different prisoner of war camps, being retrieved each time. After his third escape, the Germans isolated him in “the hole” for about a month. There, Kelly said, the man contemplated giving up.
“(He told me) God said, ‘You promised your momma and daddy you were coming home, that you’d see them again,’” Kelly said. “He said, ‘I decided right there I wasn’t going to give up and God was with me.’ It wasn’t much later that they were liberated and he was released.”
Kelly, a serviceman himself who spoke at the Exchange Club’s annual “One Nation Under God” program, said this veteran’s story was just one of the many to be told from those who fought for freedom.
“It’s those great men and women throughout the world, throughout the history of this nation, and they’re the reason we have this nation,” Kelly said. “… The reason we’re able to read, the reason we’re able to say what we want, the reason that I’m able to be an elected official, the reason that some of you are able to be elected officials, is because of these great men and women who have been willing to sacrifice everything.”
Election results
Speaking to The Dispatch after the meeting, Kelly said he is pleased to see Republicans en route to winning a majority in the House of Representatives, even if the Senate majority remains up in the air.
On Tuesday, he defeated Democratic challenger Dianne Black by a margin of more than 2-to-1.
“I think it’s great,” he said. “We’re a resilient country. That’s why we have elections. Whatever direction it decides to go, I still think we’ll win the House. Not by as large of a majority as a lot of people thought, and I thought, quite frankly. But we are going to be fine as a nation. We always have been and we always will be.”
He said the priority this term will be shifting the focus of intelligence agencies.
“On the intel committee, (we need to) get our intelligence community back to doing intelligence work and not impeachment work,” he said.
“To get them back to doing the duty that the American people need them to do. The men and women who do those jobs, they’ve always been about that, but the leadership needs to focus on doing that job, and that’s protecting us from our enemies on foreign soil.”
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