In the hurly-burly of the present, we often too easily forget the sacrifices of the past. Not so perhaps this year, nine decades removed from that morning when an armistice was signed in a French forest, ending the “war to end all wars.”
More so perhaps than ever before, as our nation’s armed forces continue to strive valiantly to bring peace and the promise of democracy to the Middle East, take some time this day — Veterans Day — to look around you at the folks who still fill the main-traveled roads of your life. And there you will find them, the men and women who left home and hearth to shoulder the burdens of liberty.
He is the elderly man across the street raking leaves. He is the pharmacist at the corner drug store who diligently fills all your prescriptions. she is the next-door neighbor who never fails to pick up your mail when you’re away on vacation. He is the town official who, every Memorial Day, reads Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address in such an inspiring manner. He is the octogenarian country doctor who learned his trade on some far-flung Korean battlefield. He is your father, your uncle, your brother, your aunt, or the mother of your child’s Sunday school teacher. They are American veterans. And today is their day.
They have names we have heard before. He is Nathan Hale, who regretted he had but one life to give for his country. And she is Molly Pitcher, who, in the searing temperatures of the Battle of Monmouth, brought water to her husband’s battery and then helped fire the cannons when the men were overcome by heat.
He is Robert E. Lee, who followed his beloved home state into the Southern Confederacy and then helped bind an entire nation’s wounds in the wake of a vicious war among brothers. He is Alvin York, a gentle, peace-loving man from the Tennessee hills who single-handedly captured more than 120 German soldiers one day in World War I. He is Audie Murphy, the most decorated combat soldier of World War II who single-handedly stopped a heavy German attack at the edge of the Riedwihr woods near Holtzwhir, France. He is Capt. Dick Shea, a West Point miler who died leading his troops up Porkchop Hill in Korea. He is Lance Cpl. Daniel Bubb, a U.S. Marine from Grottoes, and Lance Cpl. Jourdan Grez, a Marine from Harrisonburg, both killed five years ago in Iraq. And he is Army Spc. Bucky Anderson of Broadway, killed on June 12 in Afghanistan.
Yet the nameless Americans we never heard about are no less heroic. He followed the plume of Stuart while his brother marched with U.S. Grant — and they met several times in the lush Virginia countryside, each armed with his own interpretation of liberty.
He charged up San Juan Hill with Teddy Roosevelt and then wept when his youngest died in the Argonne Forest. He flew with Eddie Rickenbacker and Jimmy Doolittle, and sailed with Halsey, Farragut and John Paul Jones. He hit the beaches of North Africa and Normandy and walked into the teeth of Japanese machine gun fire on Tarawa and Iwo Jima.
He fought his way with Chesty Puller and the First Marines from the frozen Chosin Reservoir in North Korea, to the docks of Hungnam and the sea. He battled an unseen enemy at Hue and Khe Sanh and she, an Army nurse, helped the last refugee child aboard when fear rode the last plane from Da Nang.
He drove a Bradley armored vehicle through a “desert storm” to the gates of Basra. And now he fights the Taliban in Afghanistan.
“His name and fame are the birthright of every American citizen,” said Gen. Douglas MacArthur in his famed speech at West Point. “He has written his own history and written it in red on his enemy’s breast.”
These are America’s veterans and today is their day. Remember them, for without their selflessness and bravery, these words would ring hollow.
And there would be no holidays to celebrate.
<a href="http://www.dailynews-record.com/opinion_details.php?AID=52099&CHID=36tag:news.google.com,2005:cluster=http://www.dailynews-record.com/opinion_details.php?AID=52099″>The Daily News Record: Editorial Opinion
elderly man, pharmacist, sacrifices
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