• Memorial Day: veterans’ service came ‘as a duty’ Memorial Day: veterans’ service came ‘as a duty’ Veterans of Foreign Wars Today, We are we seek to honor and to pay our respects to the men and women who stood
• Memorial Day: veterans’ service came ‘as a duty’
Memorial Day: veterans’ service came ‘as a duty’
Veterans of Foreign Wars
Today, We are we seek to honor and to pay our respects to the men and women who stood between liberty and tyranny.
proud to have the opportunity to speak in humble remembrance of their sacrifice, and with great hope that the simple words spoken here today will extend and perpetuate awareness of their achievements to future generations.
As we pause to remember our fallen comrades, we need to take time to give thought to their families, their friends, and to those who love them. We cannot measure the depth of their loss. Nor can we comprehend the true measure of their sorrow.
But we can, and we must, extend to them the knowledge that we will never forget their loved ones, their valor, their sacrifice, and the many good things they have earned for us. And to their loved ones, we promise our fallen comrades will never be forgotten. They are with us daily, remembered in our hearts and minds.
If we are to properly honor them, we cannot speak of them in an abstract way, but in real and human terms. They were our buddies, much more than friends; closer than family in many ways, existing in a kinship that only those who have experienced the realities of war can understand. We honor their memory, but at the same time we mourn them. We are grateful for the privilege of knowing them and having them included in our lives.
They served their nation well, standing between the enemy and us, between good and evil, between freedom and tyranny. Their service came not as a burden, but as a duty.
What is finest about our nation, individual freedom, justice, equality and opportunity, has been sustained because of them. Every American is in their debt.
Generations of Americans have put themselves in harm’s way for humanities’ sake.
They fought and died for the greater good. They served not only to preserve our nation’s values, but also so that the ideals of freedom and liberty could be extended to all citizens of the world.
Franklin D. Roosevelt said it best: “They fight not for the lust of conquest. They fight to end conquest. They fight to liberate. They fight to let justice arise, and (for) tolerance and goodwill among all God’s people.”
