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Veterans Day: From Valley Forge to Gettysburg, from Pointe du Hoc to the Pusan Perimeter, and from Khe Sanh to Fallujah, we salute and give thanks to those who gave their last full measure of devotion.
Related Topics: Military & Defense
Approximately 5,000 Americans died in combat in the Revolutionary War, equivalent in terms of today's population to half a million. Some 2,000 died in a place called Valley Forge in the bitter winter of 1776. They were the first veterans of the new nation, but they would not be the last.
Less than a century later, this nation would be involved in a great Civil War in which more Americans would die in a single day than in four years of combat in Iraq. On Sept. 17, 1862, 3,650 soldiers on both sides died at Antietam, with 22,700 wounded or missing. In the end, 620,000 would be killed in a nation of just 31 million.
If casualties and uncertain prospects for success are the benchmark for giving up the struggle for democracy and freedom, Lincoln might have given up after Antietam. Washington might have given up after Valley Forge. But America does not give up, does not cut and run, and neither does its military.
We forget in the trivia of modern-day politics that the existence of this nation at various points in its history was, as the British are prone to say, a "very near thing." Lincoln remembered this at Gettysburg, in honoring those who sacrificed so that this nation would not perish from the Earth. We should remember too. Every day.
Fortunately, we had a secret weapon — the American soldier. Ronald Reagan made that observation on a cliff in Normandy on June 6, 1984, some 40 years after U.S. Army Rangers scaled it under withering German fire to ensure the success of D-Day. "These are the boys of Pointe du Hoc," Reagan would say. "These are the men who would take the cliffs. These are the champions who helped free a continent. These are the heroes who helped end the war."
As Reagan noted, they "knew some things were worth dying for. One's country was worth dying for, and democracy is worth dying for, because it's the most deeply honorable form of government ever devised by man." Some unfortunately have forgotten that.
Six months after D-Day, the troops of the 101st Airborne would find themselves surrounded by German panzer divisions in the Belgian town of Bastogne. It was an offensive that could have delayed or even changed the outcome of the war. They shouldn't have been able to hold out, but they did.
On Dec. 22, 1944, Brig. Gen. Anthony McAuliffe answered a Nazi surrender demand with the famous one word response that would be America's answer to tyrants who threaten us ever since: "Nuts!"
There would be more sacrifices. The month-long assault on Iwo Jima resulted in more than 28,000 American casualties, including 6,821 dead. Casualties at Okinawa totaled more than 38,000 Americans wounded and 12,000 killed or missing.
Sometimes the results are inconclusive, and sometimes defeat is snatched from the jaws of victory by timid politicians back home. But that does not diminish the valor and the sacrifice of the brave soldiers who held out against great odds at places like Pusan in Korea and Khe Sanh in Vietnam.
The nature of the war that began on 9/11 is different, but the goal of the enemy is the same. It wants to wipe freedom from the face of the Earth. But those who embrace fanatical and nihilistic ideologies, from Nazism to Islamofascism, are up against an enemy they can never understand or defeat — the American soldier.
We remember Pat Tillman, the former Arizona Cardinals safety killed while serving with the Army Rangers in Afghanistan. Tillman could have stayed in the National Football League earning millions of dollars, but he was willing to put his life on the line for his country. That he was killed by friendly fire is irrelevant to his sacrifice. As columnist Michael Reagan has said, when you're in a war zone and you're killed, you're a hero. In our book as well.
On April 30, 2005, Cpl. Jeffrey Starr, of Snohomish, Wash., was killed in a gunbattle in Ramadi on his third tour of duty. After his death, Starr's family found the letter on his laptop computer written to his girlfriend, Emmylyn Anonical.
In the letter, Starr said: "I kind of predicted this; this is why I'm writing this . . . A third time just seemed like I'm pushing my chances." Emmylyn decided to make the letter public, explaining, "The reason I chose to share that letter was the part about why he was doing this, not the part about him expecting to die."
Wrote Starr: "I don't regret going, everybody dies, but few get to do it for something as important as freedom. It may seem confusing why we are in Iraq, it's not to me. I'm here helping these people, so that they can live the way we live. Not have to worry about tyrants or vicious dictators. To do what they want with their lives. To me that is why I died. Others have died for my freedom. Now this is my mark."
Long before the "Anbar Awakening" and the success of Gen. David Petraeus' surge, men like Marine Sgt. Rafael Peralta went nose-to-nose with al-Qaida in Iraq. In the November 2004 battle for Fallujah, Sgt. Peralta was shot in the head and chest at close range as his team went house-to-house clearing the town of jihadists.
As he lay on the floor of a terrorist hideout, Peralta saw a yellow, foreign-made grenade that would have wiped out his entire squad. To save his fellow Marines, he reached out, grabbed the grenade and tucked it into his abdomen, where it exploded.
Maybe Robert Redford, Meryl Streep and Tom Cruise can make movies about real heroes like Peralta, Starr and the boys of Pointe du Hoc, who gave them the opportunity to produce anti-war drivel like "Lions for Lambs," set for release this Veterans Day.
At the end of the 1954 film "The Bridges at Toko-Ri," based on the Korean War novel by James Michener, the crusty old captain of an American aircraft carrier, watching his pilots take off for another mission from which not all would return, asks rhetorically, "Where do we get such men?"
Where indeed? Thank you all.
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