Disclaimer: I have taken certain romantic liberties with various aspects of US military involvement and history. Not every soldier was as willing as most were, and it would be irresponsible of me to assume otherwise. Not every instance of military involvement, in addition, was truly in place to defend America, though at the time they were each defending American ideals.
And perhaps most importantly, not every person you will read about herein is someone I know, or know of. Some you may have met, because I have. Some are possibly borrowed from another work, though not intentionally. Some I have taken some pains to create from air, but the possibility that my creation matches an actual person is quite high. Please do not attempt to differentiate between those people who may be real and those who may be imagination.
My knowledge of American history, especially regarding military involvement and action, is not nearly as complete as it might be. I am not well versed on many, if any, of the intricacies of these involvements and my intent is not to espouse the belief that as a country we have never committed a military error.
This piece was written when our escalated military involvement in Iraq was still new. Coverage saturated the American media 24 hours a day and it was very nearly impossible not to hear news from Iraq frequently during the day. I have retained references I made when I wrote this to stories that are less heroic than they then appeared to be, and added nothing to the original text. Bear that in mind as you read words obviously colored by what was believed to be true earlier this year.
My intent, through recognizing individuals, is to give thanks and recognition to the body of people who have served this country. They are examples singled out only as such. They are, in the end, one body: the United States Armed Forces.
Whether because you merely wanted to rebel against your mother country, you wanted to take a stand against tyranny, or you were in it for the glory, you fought and bled for me. You died for me. And I do not know your name. Many in this country know precious little about the war that granted your people, our people, freedom from oppression. I have lived where you fought, and I have seen the river named for that fight so costly the water flowed deep red, and the tears of your mothers, of your families, burned tracks down their faces as they faced a new life, a new country, and a new freedom … yet without so many of those who fought to the death to guarantee it.
A poor family you were, and one without much to offer in worldly possessions. But your pride was rich and vivid and your courage matched its stride as you stood up and volunteered your life for … a country that was yet to be. Colonies, then. And as you spilled your blood and it ran that river red, it became the ink in Fate’s pen as a new country’s name was written for all time: The United States of America. Your life ended before your new country’s began, but it was a noble end, a courageous end, a necessary end. The rules of war then are as now: first, that young men die; second, that you nor anyone else can change the first.
Your name and much about you is lost to antiquity, but your deeds are as visible now as they were when the blade on your bayonet found its target in the chest of a British soldier, of a Hessian mercenary, of your enemy.
Thank you for defending my country.
A few years later, more military action was seen by this nation’s soil. A country in many ways still in its infancy fought again and, though not alone or principally targeted, emerged still standing, still breathing, still a nation on this Earth along with so many others. And you fought … you fought again. It was not this time to give me my freedom but to ensure it, but the fight was just as real, just as bloody, just as important to our country’s history. Again your bayonet found its way into the heart of your enemy as your bullets charged through that same enemy as Fate herself driving propelling that small, gray ball through the muscle, through the breath, through the lifeblood and through the heart of that enemy before leave it, perhaps, to inflict pain on another.
It was not for fame that you handed your life over to a new country’s protective forces. It was not for glory or honor or the chance to shoot another man. You believed then, as you believed when you held your own mortality in your hand and watched your life pour out of your body and turn the ground red, that some among us were called to ensure the freedom of others even if it meant your life. You did not shirk this duty; you stood up and let it be known you would take it as the most precious, dutiful position it was. You would strive to be what your country needed, and historians’ account of that conflict shows your success.
And still I know nothing more about you than you were. As a collective you are now, in history, as The Unites States Military. I do not know your name, I do not know your rank, I do not know your home state or if you left your children without a father when all was said and done. All I need to know is that I have you to thank for my freedom.
Thank you for defending my country.
You were called upon again, at the other end of this then-teenage country, to defend your freedom, her freedom, our freedom, my freedom. You and your family risked your lives to ensure mine now. Knowing you might die, knowing you might never live to see your country again as you charged forth to make this land secure for all her people. The war was not so easy this time, nor did you have the allies you’d had before. Many more of your fellow soldiers died at the hand of an enemy more fierce, but ultimately doomed to the fate of so many others: defeat. Your force met, your force equaled, your force surpassed and your force claimed land for your country and your people; my country and my people.
It was an educated decision, not one based in the desire to see how many men you could kill in a day. It was the realization that some men must volunteer their lives to ensure that so many others are kept safe from that hand you risked holding every day you fought. It was a hand that forcefully gripped men you had known for years … some no more than teenagers, some veterans of a conflict some 20 years before. One or two had tales to tell of their grandfathers going hand-to-hand against Britain’s finest and coming out unscathed. Some had tales that did not end so well for their own grandfathers. And for those who had fallen, for those who had risen because of them, and for those who had yet to do either, you fought. Every charge you made, every bullet you sent to find an enemy body, every time you saw our flag waved you knew might be your last.
And still I do not know your name. I would not know you if I were shown your picture; if I read of your exploits I would not be able to say “Oh, I read about him in class yesterday!” I know nothing of you but that you were successful, and a nation again challenged emerged victorious—scathed, but victorious. And once again her people were safe.
Thank you for defending my country.
A different call it was in the middle of that century, as a country rose up against itself. The question that would be answered: can a country, once divided by blood, sweat, tears, bullets and itself … can it withstand its own brutality? That question was answered five years later as a nation emerged badly hurt, but still its heart beat with your fife and drum. Still her flag was held up to say “We are here and we will not be defeated.” The enemy, this time, was your own brother. And when it counted, you triumphed over your brother and set a people free, knowing it might mean ending your life but knowing also that it might mean beginning others’ lives. Again you heard the call to serve your country, my country, our country—and you did.
Your brother before this started became your target after it, and your father was forced to make that decision no parent should ever face. And in remembering that sometimes, to play the hero at the end, one must play the villain once, you were required to send your brother to an enemy’s final resting spot: beside his father, your father, in a cemetery of the fallen but not forgotten. You returned home a shell of yourself, having seen what your own hands could do you vowed to yourself that day what they would never do again, as you hung up your weapon and made a new life for yourself saving life, not taking it away. And when anybody asked why you had spent so much time and effort to become a doctor, you looked them in the eye and had only this to say: “In the war, I was required to take lives. Now I am given to saving lives.”
And today we are here because of it. We are here because you, soldier, though I know not your name nor much else of you, you risked your life, your body, your livelihood to ensure that so many others might know the freedom you had known so long. And in the end, a people are free and your deeds, as a whole, as the military of our country, forever remembered.
Thank you for defending my country.
Another call came some 35 years later, and, ever vigilant, ever willing, ever proud and strong and brave and victorious, you answered the call as though your life depended on it. This fight was not so cruel, so divisive, so painful as the last, but the importance is the same: your country, my country, our country … still free. In a country where so often people failed and fail at their jobs, yours was done and with pride and success. You did not have to bury so many of your brothers after this call was answered in full, but their hearts stopped beating for your freedom, for my freedom, for our freedom. The grave unmarked, maybe, but not forgotten nor in vain.
Few have had to call an enemy brother, or a brother enemy, so deeply and painfully as you did. Each of you believed as strongly as the other in the cause you risked your life for. And in the end it was not due to fear nor cowardice but Fate’s hand yet again gripping a hand and pulling it away from the fight to every battlefield soldier’s final resting place. You sent another man to that place, as one you had called father before you called dead when all was over. And your duty done, your task completed, you vowed to make your life’s work from that point the polar opposite of your past actions. The lives you had taken would be redeemed in the lives you would pull away from Fate’s hand to ensure that your fight, your task, your pain was not in vain. And when someone asked you why you became a doctor, you looked into that person’s eyes and simply said “I have given two lives to Fate’s eternal hand. Now I take lives from that hand and keep them with their owners.”
My lone regret is that as I write this tribute to you I cannot call you by name. You are as important to this country as you are faceless, for your mark is not by your individual accomplishment but what you and your fellow soldiers, your military, did to ensure your country, my country, our country today. I can sit here and write this letter to you, but I cannot thank you by name.
Thank you for defending my country.
Your life was and is dedicated to serving this country. I saw that when you responded to a call to go overseas and kill the evil power that could, and probably would, have spread further had it not been for your selfless bravery. You charged forth and your blood was spilled on the farms and streets, on the countrysides and in the arms of your fellow soldiers. You were killed by snipers, by tanks, by machine guns and by disease, but your sole aim, your sole duty, and your sole cause was the same: protect, uphold and maintain freedom. You stood by with your fellow soldiers, some you felt you never really got to know because if you did, maybe you’d have seen they weren’t allowed to be fighting because they were disabled, or too young, or too old, or they were your sisters and mothers and aunts and daughters, not your brothers.
You watched them die and they watched you die, and in the end you lost your best friend in that field in Southern France, then returned 50 years later as some phantom force pulled you to an especially ragged area of the landscape and, not knowing quite what was pulling your tired, beleaguered body along lo these 80 years of your life, you found the means to recognize that soul and his remains, dead but not forgotten. And you left your Purple Heart pin on the ground there in silent thanks to your brother-in-arms, who got in front of you to get a better angle on the enemy just as a bullet came toward you. That bullet found his chest, not yours. It was you whom Fate meant to bring back with her that day. You have told that story exactly once since that day, and your grandchildren, learning about this war 50 years later, now find out just how close their Grandpa came so many years ago to being one memory in his wife’s mind instead of dozens in theirs.
You had lost many friends, many brothers to that Great War, and ordinarily they were buried in graveyards by the local citizens. And you wanted a proper burial for him then, but you could not find the body, and your unit had to press forward to meet that same enemy again who had taken the life of your friend. And in your mind forever after that has been “I must … I will find him again and thank him for my life.” You paused by his as-yet unmarked grave that day and remembered not a fearless man who always asked for the most difficult missions but a man just as you had been: scared, worried, homesick. And just as unsure of himself as you were, his desire to right that one ultimate wrong was all he needed to charge forth and, ultimately, accept his death before the bleeding could be stopped. And as you somehow, fifty years later, find through some unseen force the place you buried him so long ago, your heart can stop bleeding, stop hurting for the man who gave you life, as you are able to bring closure to his.
And you did your duty: you answered a call in the dead of the night and left your country to go fight another. Today many of us cannot imagine what it must have been like to abandon everything you had known to go overseas and take a bullet for a people you had never met, but who have not forgotten you since. And so, in a then-emerging age of communication and news, you are immutably and for eternity enshrined in History’s annals. Your picture is not lost to history now; no, whether it was your desire or not you are as much a part of history as anyone else in the world. I have been to the graves of your fellow soldiers. I have stood at the cross marking the grave of that man who joined his country’s Army in 1917 because the cause was right in his heart enough to entrust a growing family to his young wife and oldest son; 7 when he left, 9 when he died. I have walked the crosses in the graves in France where your friends, your leaders, your men are laid to rest for eternity. I have read the names of every man buried in that cemetery in Oise-Aigne, France; where that one man rests so do his comrades-in-arms, though he knew some not until he met them in that final resting place. And still, though I know your cause, I know your desires, I know your final resting places, and I know your victorious result, I know not your name.
Thank you for defending my country.
(Part 2 to follow shortly)