Today’s Quote: It is…for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us; that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom; and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. Abraham Lincoln, The Gettysburg Address

When I was a child, I would sometimes talk my father and my uncles—my mother’s brothers—into taking me along with them to fish, either from the banks of the Sewanee River or down in the Keys. On one such outing, I remember curling up on my father’s lap in the front seat of an uncle’s car. I remember, too, drowsing in that utterly relaxed and heavenly state on the border between waking and sleeping. As evening enveloped us, I could feel my father’s baritone rumble as he chatted with the uncles. My father and all of the uncles were veterans, either of World War II or Korea. Inevitably, as we rode along in the dusk, the conversation turned to war reminiscences. Thinking that I was sound asleep, my father began to tell his war story. Months after graduating from West Point and marrying my mother, he received his orders for Korea. He was to serve as second in command of a platoon somewhere on the front. Within weeks of his assuming his duties, the captain of the platoon was killed. And so my father found himself, a young second lieutenant, in command of this platoon. He recounted the terrible chaos of combat, the heavy burden of responsibility for other men’s lives. He also recounted how, on one unfortunate afternoon, he climbed a small hill to find himself face-to-face with a North Korean soldier who held a bazooka. Before my father could move, the soldier had fired the bazooka, striking my father in both legs at close range. The miracle is that my father survived. Somehow he was evacuated to a hospital ship in the China Sea where, after months of surgery and rehabilitation, he was sent back into Korea to lead another platoon.
My father received a Purple Heart for the injuries he sustained. Years later, when I was no longer a child and we were involved in another war in Southeast Asia, my father told me that he had never met a veteran who loved war; he said that soldiers know better than anyone how horrible war is. Later still, when the subject of Vietnam came up at my church, a man declared that he could not think of anything worth killing for. I realized then that, during his lengthy and distinguished service to his country, my father did not think in terms of “things worth killing for;” he thought, instead, of things worth dying for.
He knew that, ironically, without things worth dying for, nothing is worth living for. Thanks always, Dad, for your example and your service. Love,…