Posted by
Nee on Tuesday, May 27, 2008 6:20:27 PM
I remember. I won't forget. I do solemnly swear.
For as far as I could see, they were all around me. I was surrounded. A clear blue sky, a breeze whisping across my face and a soft sound of crisp snapping. The vastness of the white marble in perfect rows is humbling. The goose bumps on my skin makes the hair on my arms stand at attention.
I am standing at attention, fingers curled and presiding over a field covered in sacrifice. I am alone in my thoughts, though surrounded by many. I looked at each name, hoping that one would be etched to memory. My uncle didn’t get to be buried there. He was lost at sea on the USS Dorchester in 1943. But it isn’t just those names I wanted to commit. It was the magnitude of the gift many of the fallen willingly gave to us.
I was encompassed by many whose lives had been cut short for the Land of the free, home of the brave. Duty, Honor, Country. Nothing is more sacred than the lives laid down in the name of freedom. Where would we be without those sacrifices and the ones to surely come? How is something so obvious constantly overlooked? America would not be what it is without any of them.
Why are there folks who want to put a price on what we have? Why do they take it for granted that someone else understands the privilege of serving this Country to preserve those freedoms?
This place should make everyone grateful for all that we hold dear. It should move a person to tears to know that some loved this Country so much they were willing to die without a second thought. It should make you shiver with gratitude.
I felt those things and I shed tears for people I would never know. I understand the words, ”Their Valor is our heritage.” For my Uncle David, and my other Greats, I must carry on and spread the word. Freedom isn’t free and no cost can be attached.
I stop and pause near the civil war grounds. I say a prayer and offer my whispered thanks and appreciation…as if on cue, the wind kicks up and I hear that faint snapping of those little “Old Glory’s” perched at every headstone.
I remember...Miles,Zembiec,Patraquin, Olmsted, Smith, Schram, Callaghan, Maupin, Speicher, Murphy, Axelson, Dietz,Piestewa,Blaney, Jones, Sheehan, Lee, Spann....