It was a somewhat typical New England spring day. Ripe with the promise of summer....and of a change...a very profound change. The men hugged their wives and children...some for the last time...and, as they had promised..(at a time when honour actually MEANT something), gathered at the village green.

Armed with various weapons....and with various degrees of purpose...they stood in line facing the finest light infantry in the world.

What do we (as the inheritors of their resolve..indeed of their dream).....owe them??????

Around 75 years later....a battle line of Union soldiers was holding on to a small rocky knoll...barely.

...and charging up the knoll (some call it a hill) were other soldiers...bent on taking control of that rocky area.

BOTH battle lines were composed of Americans....
BOTH battle lines were inheritors of the American Dream........
BOTH battle lines .....struggling for the very soul of that American Dream.

50 some odd years later...a man named 'Jack' (tall....very tall..and skinny) was in a trench in France....feeling very frightened...and yet.....fighting as hard as he could against a German attack.

Feeling the mustard gas start to take hold of his lungs...and standing his ground...firing his weapon as fast as he could...feeling even the stock get hot.

Fast forward...to the Battle of the Bulge....in WWII. A man named Leonard is shivering in the snow and cold...afraid.

He has fought for days with no warm food (actually very little food at all)...and has been cold the entire time.

He has been in Bastogne for a week...has seen it filled with troops running for their lives....has seen tanks grind men..friends...beneath their treads. He has witnessed the artillery pounding the buildings around him to dust.......

A few years later...a man named Robert..who dreamed as a child in Oklahoma of being a Marine.....wonders if he will ever get warm again...wonders if he will ever return home alive.

Paid for with the blood of those who decided that this Nation...with a beginning so dedicated to the idea that each and every one of us is endowed from our Creator with the Right to live our lives the way we deem...and that each and every one of us is also endowed by that same Creator with the Responsibility for that life.....was worth fighting for.

We owe them no rewards...no statues....no long winded speeches by self-serving politicians. (even Lincoln understood.........the very act of standing up and fighting for your beliefs negates all words)

But we do owe them what we promised. A day set aside to remember what they did....and to say "Thank You".

"We must teach them."..and.."The heartfelt significance requires reminding. Story telling. Wisdom being passed on from our Veterans to our younger generations."

..every year...I collect the stories as best I can...and every year (for at least as long as I've been on FR)...I try and pass them on.

Whenever I collect a new story....I read it to my children...so they might get the lessons...and understand just how precious..and how costly our Freedom is.

What you've posted is the truth.

...and the truth (no matter what some may say) is always awesomly beautiful.

Thank You for posting it.

redrock

What Is A Veteran

Some veterans bear visible signs of their service:
a missing limb, a jagged scar, a certain look in the eye.

Others may carry the evidence inside them: a pin holding
a bone together, a piece of shrapnel in the leg -
or perhaps another sort of inner steel: the soul's
ally forged in the refinery of adversity.

Except in parades, however, the men and women who
have kept America safe wear no badge or emblem.

You can't tell a vet just by looking. What is a vet?

He is the cop on the beat who spent six months in Saudi
Arabia sweating two gallons a day making sure the armored
personnel carriers didn't run out of fuel.

He is the barroom loudmouth, dumber than five wooden planks,
whose overgrown frat-boy behavior is outweighed a
hundred times in the cosmic scales by four hours of
exquisite bravery near the 38th parallel.

She - or he - is the nurse who fought against futility
and went to sleep sobbing every night for
two solid years in Da Nang.

He is the POW who went away one person and came back another -
or didn't come back AT ALL.

He is the Quantico drill instructor who has never seen combat -
but has saved countless lives by turning slouchy, no-account
rednecks and gang members into Marines, and teaching them to
watch each other's backs.

He is the parade - riding Legionnaire who pins on his ribbons
and medals with a prosthetic hand.

He is the career quartermaster who watches the
ribbons and medals pass him by.

He is the three anonymous heroes in The Tomb Of The Unknowns,
whose presence at the Arlington National Cemetery must forever
preserve the memory of all the anonymous heroes whose valor
dies unrecognized with them on the battlefield
or in the ocean's sunless deep.

He is the old guy bagging groceries at the supermarket -
palsied now and aggravatingly slow - who helped liberate a
Nazi death camp and who wishes all day long that his wife were
still alive to hold him when the nightmares come.

He is an ordinary and yet an extraordinary human being -
a person who offered some of his life's most vital years in
the service of his country, and who sacrificed his ambitions
so others would not have to sacrifice theirs.

He is a soldier and a savior and a sword against the darkness,
and he is nothing more than the finest, greatest testimony on
behalf of the finest, the greatest nation ever known.

So remember, each time you see someone who has served our country,
just lean over and say Thank You. That's all most people need,
and in most cases it will mean more than any medals they could
have been awarded or were awarded. Two little words that mean a lot,
"THANK YOU." Author- Father Denis Edward O'Brien
USMC

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