Note: This speech was delivered to a small crowd several years ago now, during the height of increasing violence in Iraq, and continued conflicting politics here at home. The instruction from several Vietnam era combat veterans was "give us a Memorial Day message to bind our community, not divide it. Return to the core message, honoring our lost comrades in arms."
The author is a first Gulf War era veteran, and a graduate of West Point, and it is sincerely hoped that some of you might take the time today, away from the beaches and grills, to remember our Nation’s fallen and the true meaning and purpose of this, our National Day of Memorial.
Excerpt from the speech "On Lives Interrupted..."
First, A Personal Story... last Sunday [in 2005], my croquet game was interrupted.
A close friend quietly pulled me aside and said, "I haven’t told anyone about this yet, but I’m thinking about joining the Army."
The entire speech below...
The speech began like this...
Upon this very hill on the morning of April 29th, 1861 at a new church still under construction, local citizens gathered to discuss the terrible news of the attack on Ft. Sumter.
One of the resolutions these citizens passed that day read:
"Resolved, that like our forefathers, we pledge our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor to sustain inviolate [held sacred] the Union and Constitution purchased by their blood."
That day their lives were interrupted.
Most of you will recognize the fourth stanza of our national anthem written a 50 years earlier by Francis Scott Key in the War of l812:
O thus be it ever when freemen shall stand
Between their loved homes and the war’s desolation!
Blest with vict’ry and peace, may the Heaven-rescued land
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation.
Then conquer we must when our cause it is just
And this be our motto: "In God is our Trust."
That time our entire national government was interrupted as our Nation braced to repel an overwhelming British invasion of our homeland.
A Personal Story...
Last Sunday [in 2005], my croquet game was interrupted.
A close friend quietly pulled me aside and said, "I haven’t told anyone about this yet, but I’m thinking about joining the Army."
He proceeded to explain his thinking. He described a common American story, a long family history of service, great-grandfather, grandfathers, his uncle, were veterans, couple of them West Point grads, and his father was a combat veteran in Vietnam.
We discussed in detail what his signing up might entail; four years of active duty, probably at least one stop-loss action, a reserve commitment; all in all probably at least three, most likely four theater tours in Afghanistan or Iraq, with some probability of some third major operation over the next six or seven years.
At one point he said to me "Why haven’t you tried to talk me out of this?"
"Well", I said, "I understand how you feel. I was sort of saving that set of options for our next talk actually."
After some thought, he replied, "I respect that, I appreciate your honesty. You of all people know how I feel about what is happening in Iraq. But I feel I have to do something, prove myself, and do my share. Simply put, I love this country".
Of Service and Sacrifice...
Throughout our history citizens, sons and daughters, mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, close friends and classmates from all walks of life took up the war drum’s beat, a burden we as a Nation, would call upon them to bear, a march from which many would not return.
Today, in America despite all that we have and accomplished; these are troubling and listless times.
They are times of war and rumors of war.
They are times in which we struggle against those that would do us harm.
They are times of both dissent and affirmation.
They are the times that provoke heated discussion, debate and doubt.
These are times in which our democracy debates to affirm the appropriate use of our military power, the reality of ground truths, the meaning of "just" and "unjust" cause, and what we call "American Values".
But these debates, past and present, that try the very soul of America, are not the work of a soldier.
The members of our uniformed armed forces do not publicly debate politics.
They do not declare war.
They fight in conflicts, to which "We the People", through our representative government, send them.
Once in a hot combat zone they have a job to do and life and death tasks to accomplish.
These citizens, both past and present, some of who stand here with you today or stand now in some distant place answering our country’s call are the bulwark of our common defense.
They are our soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen.
On this occasion, our national day of memorial, we honor and acknowledge all of those who have answered our Nation’s call, those that have suffered a life interrupted, those that have made the sacred sacrifice of limb and life.
These are the men and women whom we gather to remember;
those fellow citizens that have been borne home on their shields, to their mothers and fathers,
those that lay silent in foreign fields of great suffering and strife,
those that lay unknown, in a distant hidden resting place;
those past heroes that have the "whole earth for their tomb".
Their full measure of devotion is why we can assemble in freedom here today.
But just how do we honor them?
General George Washington, by the winter of 1781 and after a number of severe trials, had accomplished something extraordinary.
He created an American military that was fueled by patriotism and nationalism; a new weapon born out of a curious American experiment that would shake the foundations of a world ruled by monarchies.
He had created an army that was not a paid mercenary force, led by privileged gentry, disciplined by the whip, as was the military practice in those days.
Washington commanded an army made up of mostly of volunteers that were fighting for the abstract, for concepts like that of liberty and representative government, often led by those that were often elected to lead, citizen-soldiers held together through the persuasion of ideas, and a common purpose.
Washington often called the War for Independence our "noble cause".
Washington described the purpose for which we stand here today surrounded by our children. He said:
"The willingness with which our young people are likely to serve in a war, no matter how justified, shall be directly proportional as to how they perceive the veterans of earlier wars were treated and appreciated by their nation."
We have appreciated and supported our troops as a Nation to one degree or another throughout our history. With what level of dedication and devotion is, at times, perhaps debatable.
But what is it... that drives the finest of our youth to answer our call to service?
And for what noble cause do we commit that youth to the horrors of war?
It was Thomas Paine who reminded us:
"An army of principles can penetrate where an army of soldiers cannot."
What our honored heroes leave behind is not what is engraved in our stone monuments, but the principles for which they fought for that are woven into our lives, the fabric of our free society; those principles are woven into the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
It is our love of liberty, rule of law, and our freedom of thought and deed that is our sword, the star spangled banner our armies bear.
It is these principles with which we conduct ourselves as citizens and as a nation for which our veterans have fought.
Those American values - the principles that so ably unite and support our noble cause - are the constitutional ideals that we have carried to this time.
These truths and values arise from the new concept that "we the people" give ourselves the right to certain liberties and rights that are not to be infringed upon by their government.
Among those values are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. From them arise freedom of expression, freedom of the press, the right to peaceful assembly, the right to face ones accuser, the right of regress of grievances and many other important, authentic American values.
It is such principles that define the "justness" of any American cause.
As Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote:
"Nothing will bring [us] happiness but the triumph of principles."
"The real and lasting victories are those of peace, and not of war."
John Foster Dulles takes us further:
"The world will never have lasting peace so long as men reserve for war the finest human qualities. Peace, no less than war, requires idealism and self-sacrifice and a righteous and dynamic faith."
This is our burden, to keep faith with our fallen, to create and maintain a society that knows the meaning and purpose of the lasting victory; a lasting peace.
From an original 2002 poem "The Burden of the Drum":
Until Humanity, Hope and History find their Rhythm,
And as the trembling beat of Hate and Fear
Rumble on a distant Horizon,
There have been those who have listened,
Those that were called upon to listen,
Those, who have borne, will bear,
And those that bear still,
At this very hour to battle,
The Burden of the Drum.
Conclusion...
In your hands my fellow Americans, lays a different burden; the burden to bear the principles of liberty and freedom that define the character of this Nation.
In your hands lays these fallen heroes trust;to uphold those American values and principles for which they have fought and died, those principals for which their lives have been interrupted.
On our shoulders rests this burden,to honor them, all they would ask of us is that we bear it well; with pride, unfailing courage, and moral conviction.
End of the speech "On Lives Interrupted".