10/6/2013, 4:22 pm
Prog off, way off
Dear Mr. President,
I don't believe we've met. I'm the World War II veteran whose memorials you've been closing, and I'd like to tell you a little bit about myself.
My story begins with a rude awakening one Sunday morning on board the USS Arizona when I rose to flaming ships and dying men.
I am the sailor who manned a machine gun and fired back,
I am the pilot who desperately threw myself into the battle against impossible odds,
I fought heroically at Bataan and languished as a prisoner for the remainder of the conflict,
I am the Doolittle Raider who first gave the enemy a taste of his own war,
I am the pilot who sent the enemy's proud fleet up in flames at Midway,
I am the Marine who stained sand and oceans red fighting from one bloody island to another,
I am the Tuskegee Airman who overcame discrimination at home and fascism abroad,
I am the Ranger who stormed Pointe du Hoc, the paratrooper who jumped into Sainte Mere Eglise, and the Coast Guardsman who drove an LST full of young infantrymen onto Omaha Beach,
I am the young infantryman who waded ashore on a long campaign to the enemy's capital,
I am the liberator of Buchenwald, Dachau, and Mauthausen, among others. Are the names strange to you? The smell of the emaciated corpses still intrudes into my dreams.
Oh, I'm also the cook, the quartermaster, the medic, and the chaplain who often shared in the same dangers as those who fought,
And when the war ended, I became the friend of a defeated foe and the rebuilder of his nation.
I fought in a cold, forgotten place just a few years later joined by young warriors who also answered the call to fight for the freedom of others.
Have I told you about my son? I'm proud of him, too. He was drafted as I was, and he too fought for a good cause but this time tragically undercut by a treacherous media and a fickle public. His weapons were different, his equipment more modern, but he did all, and sometimes gave all as I and my comrades had done. We came home to a parade and a thankful nation. He came home to insults, epithets, and shame. I hear you closed his memorial as you did mine. Did you mean for America to spit on him a second time?
I can't close without telling you about my grandson. He's a Marine, a SEAL, a Green Beret, and a bomber pilot, too. He saw some buildings go down in New York and a flag go up over the rubble the next day. He volunteered and you couldn't tell him not to go. He freed another nation and once again bled and wept and persevered to give a foreign people a chance at self-determination. He kept us safe and proved himself worthy of the men who marked the snow at Valley Forge with their bleeding footprints.
Today I can walk, or maybe I'm in a wheelchair, or maybe I'm beneath a white cross, but don't close my memorial. I've overcome far greater barriers than you could ever know.
Sincerely,
The World War II Veteran
