ter than you did. I met them as grown- ups, never having had the opportunity of knowing them as children or ado- lescents. In ten thousand conversations over the years in peacetime and war, I was touched when they talked to me about their parents, and the families they loved and missed so much. About their favorite uncle who kicked them in the butt when they needed it, or a respected grandparent who lived with them. The older brother that took care of them and showed them how to use a pocket knife, or kid sister they worshiped and looked out for every day on the way home from school. About the home towns they could not wait to get back to someday. About the girl they wanted to marry — or had already — and how they wanted a family of their own, and kids that would look up to them as they did their folks. The biggest difference in the way I knew them? I was with them in combat. I have seen them literally turn the intangi- bles of commitment, bravery, and selfless devotion, into real and meaningful action. In my three tours in this war as an infantry officer and commander, I never saw one hesitate, or do anything other than lean into the fire and with no apparent fear of death or injury take the fight to our merci- less enemies. Day after day, the kids we came here to remember this weekend unhesitatingly climbed into trucks or heli- copters, or departed the wire on patrol, and did it as if they were born to it…were indestructible…were without fear. They learned early as anyone who has truly experienced combat does, however, that fear is always with you. They also knew how random combat is, and how you have absolutely no control over whether you live or die. They also knew what can happen to you — or just as importantly to your best friend or one of your men — in an instant. They’d seen it…it’s frightening …horrible…but still they went out. The fear is at times an all-consuming constant but that is what courage is, isn’t it, push- ing through the dread and completing the mission assigned regardless of how dangerous. You may or may not have ever seen that in them when they were grow- ing up, or when you said “I do” holding


their hands and gazing into their eyes… but I saw it every day. You may or may not have known him or her as one of the bravest, most courageous and committed young people our society produces…but I can attest to it.


As terrifying as combat is when it starts, when the explosions and tracers are everywhere and there is no rational rea- son on this earth for a man or a woman to do anything but run away in horror or find a hole to hide in and pray to God for it to stop — they didn’t. When no one would call them coward for cowering behind a wall or shivering in panic in a bunker, slave to the most basic of all instincts — survival — none of them did. When the calls for the Corpsman or medic were shouted from the mouths of young kids who know they will soon be with their God — when seconds seem like hours and it all becomes slow motion and fast forward at the same time — and the only sensible act is stop, get down, save yourself — they never did. It doesn’t matter if it’s an IED, a suicide bomber, mortar attack, fighting in an upstairs room of a house, or all of it at once…they were magnificent. And please take comfort in the fact that when they fell they were not alone. When they went they were surrounded by the finest men and women on this earth — their buddies — who desperately tried to save their lives while holding their hands and comforted them, prayed with them, listened to all the little stories about their families and their homes…until they were gone. They were not alone and when the spirit left them and God in his infinite wis- dom took them to his bosom, their military family lovingly wrapped them in whatever passed for a shroud and sent them home. In this, their last journey, they were never alone. At every stop along the way, they were treated with the greatest reverence and deepest respect due a fallen hero until members of the service they proudly joined brought them to you.


Over 6,000 have died since 9/11, and we their families are sentenced to a life of dealing with their loss for the rest of our lives. Thousands more have suffered wounds since it all started, but like any- one who loses life or limb while serving


others, they are not victims, as they knew what they were about, and were doing what they wanted to do. The “chatter- ing class” wants to make them and us, their families, out to be victims, but they miss the point. Those who chose to serve willingly, and the families who supported them, will have none of that. Those with less of a sense of service to the nation will never understand it when men and women of character step forward and look danger and adversity straight in the eye, and refuse to blink or give ground even to their own deaths. The protected can’t begin to understand the price paid so they and their families can sleep safe and free at night. What they are missing, what they will also never understand, is the sense of commitment, joy, and honor of serving one’s country in uniform. Every service member does, as do we their families who support them, and fear for them, and, yes, will mourn for them the rest of our lives.


In my hundreds of trips to military hos- pitals around the country since 2003 and the start of the war, I’ve visited with thou- sands of grievously wounded American kids and their families. No matter how battered they were, no matter how many arms or legs they’d lost, their families thanked God they’d come home to them alive…but they also always very quietly asked me if it was worth it. I never tried to answer that question — I couldn’t — it wasn’t one of my boys lying in the hospital bed. I could never fathom the innermost thoughts of a parent who stood watch through the night at the bedside of someone they loved so much, who was so terribly wounded. Who was I to offer an opinion? And in my dozens of conversations with families of the fallen at Dover, or at gravesides at Arlington, or at gatherings like this, I’ve been similarly asked if it was worth the life of someone they brought into the world, raised and nurtured so lovingly, and so much looked forward to seeing grow and find wonder- ful husbands and wives, and give them grandchildren to spoil. Again, I had no right to reply because as hard as I tried


Continues on page 14 Crossroads Spring 2012 13


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