Memorial Day- May We Never Forget

keeper

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Regardless of your views on current conflicts, take a minute to reflect on and appreciate the sacrifice of all those who serve and protect, both current and past. Take a minute to say a prayer for those now active.
 
Iron Lungz

Iron Lungz

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There's a piece of me still in the desert... and I mean that literally.
Take the time to thank a soldier not only this weekend, but any chance you get. Don't be tied down to only appreciating the services on a Holiday, but rather all the time.

Hooah!
 
RenegadeRows

RenegadeRows

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here's to the army and navy, and the battles they have won.
Here's to America's colors, the colors that never run.

May the wings of liberty never lose a feather.
Thank you to all retired and active service members.
 

keeper

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A bump for you military guys who may have missed this thread.

General MacArthur's farewell address to the cadets at West Point in May, 1962 says it well.

"... Their story is known to all of you. It is the story of the American man at arms. My estimate of him was formed on the battlefields many, many years ago, and has never changed. I regarded him then, as I regard him now, as one of the world's noblest figures; not only as one of the finest military characters, but also as one of the most stainless.

His name and fame are the birthright of every American citizen. In his youth and strength, his love and loyalty, he gave all that mortality can give. He needs no eulogy from me, or from any other man. He has written his own history and written it in red on his enemy's breast.

But when I think of his patience under adversity, of his courage under fire, and of his modesty in victory, I am filled with an emotion of admiration I cannot put into words. He belongs to history as furnishing one of the greatest examples of successful patriotism. He belongs to posterity as the instructor of future generations in the principles of liberty and freedom. He belongs to the present, to us, by his virtues and by his achievements.

In twenty campaigns, on a hundred battlefields, around a thousand campfires, I have witnessed that enduring fortitude, that patriotic self-abnegation, and that invincible determination which have carved his statue in the hearts of his people.

From one end of the world to the other, he has drained deep the chalice of courage. As I listened to those songs of the glee club, in memory's eye I could see those staggering columns of the First World War, bending under soggy packs on many a weary march, from dripping dusk to drizzling dawn, slogging ankle deep through mire of shell-pocked roads; to form grimly for the attack, blue-lipped, covered with sludge and mud, chilled by the wind and rain, driving home to their objective, and for many, to the judgment seat of God.

I do not know the dignity of their birth, but I do know the glory of their death. They died unquestioning, uncomplaining, with faith in their hearts, and on their lips the hope that we would go on to victory. Always for them: Duty, Honor, Country. Always their blood, and sweat, and tears, as they saw the way and the light.

And twenty years after, on the other side of the globe, against the filth of dirty foxholes, the stench of ghostly trenches, the slime of dripping dugouts, those boiling suns of the relentless heat, those torrential rains of devastating storms, the loneliness and utter desolation of jungle trails, the bitterness of long separation of those they loved and cherished, the deadly pestilence of tropic disease, the horror of stricken areas of war.

Their resolute and determined defense, their swift and sure attack, their indomitable purpose, their complete and decisive victory - always victory, always through the bloody haze of their last reverberating shot, the vision of gaunt, ghastly men, reverently following your password of Duty, Honor, Country..."

To read in it's entirety: http://www.nationalcenter.org/MacArthurFarewell.html


Again, we thank each of you. You and your families have our gratitude and prayer support.
 

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