Major General John F. Kelly offers words about veterans past and present.
(FALLUJAH, Iraq) - Major General John F. Kelly dispatched a letter from Iraq stating that they held their Memorial Day ceremony in Fallujah today and it was inspiring.
"Something about looking out at real Americans who know the price paid for our protection, and the world's freedoms. Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Coast Guardsmen and Marines - heroes all," Kelly said.
The General continued: "First, a few statistics to ponder. There are twenty-five million living American Veterans. Since General George Washington commanded the Continental Army forty-two million Americans have served the colors.
A million have been killed in its defense. Another million and a half wounded. When most of us think about military cemeteries the first thought that comes to mind is Arlington National in Washington, but there are many, many more in the U.S.
Most Americans also don't know there are 24 American cemeteries maintained overseas with 125,000 graves of our fallen-61,000 in France alone-the result of two wars that saved Europe and the world from horrors unimaginable to Americans today; unimaginable, that is, unless you are a Veteran who have seen the terrible face of war so those who remained safe in America, and those yet unborn, would never have to.
There are also memorials overseas to an additional 94,000 Americans who were lost at sea, or their remains never recovered from battlefields around the globe. With all this service and loss, we as Americans can be proud of the kind of people we are as we have never retained a square foot of any country we have defeated, we possess no empire, nor have we enslaved a single human being.
On the contrary, billions across the planet are today-and billions yet unborn-live free because our Veterans have fought and died, and, once peace achieved, we've rebuilt destroyed cities, economies, and societies.
Memorial Day was established three years after our terrible Civil War that finally established what kind of nation we would be. A war in which 600,000 young Americans-North and South-perished. For a century the day continued to mean visiting and decorating graves or town-square memorials to those who died serving our great nation, and celebrating with parades and civic events.
Americans kept the day quiet pausing to remember, at least for a little while, the kind of men and women they were who gave the last full measure, and the immensity of the sacrifice they made for those who remained protected at home.
Americans should not forget this weekend or any weekend as they relax with a few days off that the country is at war, and a new Greatest Generation is fighting a merciless enemy on their behalf in the terrible heat of Iraq, and in the mountains of Afghanistan. Like it or not America is engaged in a war today against an enemy that is savage, offers no quarter, whose only objectives are to either kill every one of our families in our homeland, or enslave us with a sick form of extremism that serves no God or purpose that rational men and women can understand.
Given the opportunity to do another 9/11, our vicious enemy would do it today, tomorrow and everyday thereafter. I don't know why they hate us, and I frankly don't care and they can all go to hell, but they do hate us and are driven irrationally to our destruction. The best way to fight them is somewhere else and that is why we are here. For whatever reason they want to destroy our way of life our countrymen at home should be on their knees everyday thanking God we still have enough young people in America today willing to take up the fight as our Veterans did from the earliest days of our nation.
They should know that they are protected today by men and women as good as have ever served; as good today as their fathers were in Vietnam, and their grandfathers were in Korea and World War II. In this my third tour in Iraq I have never seen an American hesitate, or do anything other than lean into the danger and, with no apparent fear of death or injury, take the fight to the enemies of our way of life.
As anyone who has ever experienced combat knows, and many of you do, when it starts, when the explosions and tracers are everywhere and the calls for the Corpsman or medic are screamed from the throats of men who know they are dying-when seconds seem like hours and it all becomes slow motion and fast forward at the same time-everything in one's survival instinct says stop, get down, save yourself -yet you don't.
When no one would call you coward for cowering behind a wall or in a hole looking to your own self preservation, none of you do. It doesn't matter if it's an IED, a suicide bomber, mortar attack, fighting in the upstairs room of a house, or all of it at once-America should know you fight today in the same way our warriors have since the Revolution.
The wonderful thing about America's Armed Forces is that none of us are born killers. On the contrary we are good and decent Americans mostly from the neighborhoods of America's cities, and small towns. Almost all come from "salt of the earth" working class homes, and more often than not are the sons and daughters of cops and firemen, factory and service workers, and farmers.
Most of us delivered papers, stocked shelves in the grocery store, played Little League baseball and pickup hockey in the local rink, and served Mass on Sunday morning. Some are former athletes, and many "couch potatoes" who drove our cars and motorcycles too fast, and blasted our music louder than perhaps we should have.
We are all ordinary people performing remarkable acts of bravery and selfless acts of devotion to a cause bigger than ourselves-and for millions who will never know our names. Any one of us could have all stayed in school or gone another way, but yet we chose to serve knowing full well Iraq and Afghanistan was in our future. You did not avoid the most basic and cherished responsibility of a citizen-to defend the nation and its people-on the contrary, you went after it.
You did not fail in life which the chattering class back home likes to believe is why you chose to serve and risk dying for the nation, but, rather, are the best our nation produces and have consciously put every American at home above your own self interest. You are all heroes and like many Veterans throughout our history many of us have endured things-sights, sounds and horrors-that will haunt us for the rest of our lives.
