Perhaps Congress can take a hint from these gentlemen:
Tons of applause as the WWII vets from Miss. storm their memorial. Park police on the way. #shutdown pic.twitter.com/31UGU7MRry
— Leo Shane III (@LeoShane) October 1, 2013
The men in red shirts are World War II veterans, who traveled from Mississippi as part of an Honor Flight tour, which has been flying veterans to the National World War II Memorial in Washington since 2005, a year after the memorial opened.
Today, however, when the veterans arrived at the National Mall, the memorial was encased in metal barricades — a casualty of the government shutdown.
But as Leo Shane III of Stars and Stripesreports, with the help of some Congress members and their staff, who distracted police and brought down the barricades, the veterans made their way into the memorial, as tourists cheered.
"This just means so much to me," Alex "Lou" Pitalo, an Army vet, told Stars and Stripes. "I waited 70 years to get a welcome like this. And to get to see this and to have all those people clapping. ... I'm just so happy. This was amazing."
The (Biloxi-Gulfport) Sun Herald has video of the moment:
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