Memorial Day

I hope everyone has a wonderful day today as we remember and give thanks for those who serve, and especially those who made the ultimate sacrifice.  I will never forget those all-too-frequent times during my two years at West Point when the First Captain would call the Corps to attention and give us all the somber news of another member of the Long Gray Line killed before his or her time.  

The one that hit the closest to home for me, the only one that I had the blessing to know, was then-Cadet Command Sergeant Major Emily Perez.  Perez was Cadet CSM for my plebe year, and in the few passing interactions I had with her--usually when I had messed something up and she was chewing me out for it--I left with an amazing feeling that even in the midst of giving me harsh criticism and correction, she genuinely cared about me, about my development, and about my success as a soldier.  A Second Lieutenant, she was killed in Iraq by a roadside bomb in September 2006.   There are too many more like her, and we must remember them.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/24/sports/24westpoint.html?scp=5&sq=west%20point%20perez%20killed%20iraq&st=cse

They shall not grow old,

As we that are left grow old.

Age shall not weary them,

Nor the years condemn,

At the going down of the sun

And in the morning

We will remember them.

-Laurence Binyon

 

    Is it worth it?  That the U.S.A. should take on such onerous obligations and risks in order that we as a nation, and most of the world, may live without fear from any enemy?

    Is it worth it?  Is it right?  Should we go on doing it?  Each time in the future, whenever that question is asked, the beloved memories of the men…will stand before us all.

    And each time we should consider what their answer would have been…  Fellow Americans, these were military men.  These were the greatest of Americans.  Patriots.  Men of honor.  Men of duty.  They were not ordinary men.  And their answer would have come without hesitation.  Is it right?  Yes.  It would always have been, yes.

-Patrick Robinson, Nimitz Class

Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.

-John 15:13