United Liberty

“It is, in a way, an odd thing to honor those who died in defense of our country … in wars far away. The imagination plays a trick. We see these soldiers in our mind as old and wise. We see them as something like the Founding Fathers, grave and gray-haired. But most of them were boys when they died, and they gave up two lives — the one they were living and the one they would have lived. When they died, they gave up their chance to be husbands and fathers and grandfathers. They gave up their chance to be revered old men. They gave up everything for their country, for us. All we can do is remember.” ~ President Ronald Reagan

Memorial Day, like Independence Day and Veterans Day, are holidays which evoke mixed emotions in me. On the one hand, it is proper and fitting that we honor the sacrifices of those brave men and women who fought, and sometimes died, in the defense of American freedom, and often for freedom of those not of our nation. We are able to more greatly appreciate their sacrifices when we contemplate the suffering that they endured for their family, their nation and their posterity.

No student of history can fail to understand that our republic would never have come into existence, and never have endured for nearly two and a half centuries, without the unsung heroes of our armed forces; the men who marched with General George Washington towards Trenton on Christmas Eve of 1776, many malnourished and with feet bloodied and torn for lack of shoes, wrapped in burlap sacks. Without these men and their triumph over the Hessian mercenaries, the Revolutionary War would have ended shortly thereafter, with soldiers demoralized after a long series of battles lost, their commanders and the Founding Fathers hunted down and executed for treason.