Six Seconds to Live

Six Seconds to Live

"Sir, in the name of God, no sane man would have stood there and done what they did. They saved us all."

This article from the May issue of The American Legion Magazine is an excerpt of a speech Lt. Gen. John Kelly gave to the Semper Fi Society of St. Louis on Nov. 13, 2010.

Our country today is in a life-and-death struggle against an evil enemy, but America as a whole is certainly not at war. Not as a country. Not as a people. Today, only a tiny fraction of American families – less than 1 percent – shoulder the burden of fear and sacrifice, and they shoulder it for the entire nation. Their sons and daughters who serve are men and women of character who continue to believe in this country enough to put life and limb on the line without qualification, and without thought of personal gain, so the sons and daughters of the other 99 percent don’t have to. No big deal, though. Marines have always been first to fight, paying in full the bill that comes with being free for everyone else.
The comforting news for every American is that our men and women in uniform are as good today as any in our history. As good as their heroic, underappreciated and largely abandoned fathers and uncles were in Vietnam, and their grandfathers were in Korea and World War II, they have the same steel in their backs and have made their own mark, etching forever places like Ramadi, Fallujah and Baghdad in Iraq, and Helmand and Sangin, Afghanistan, that are now part of U.S. military legend and stand just as proudly alongside Iwo Jima, Normandy, Inchon, Hue City, Khe Sanh and A Shau Valley, Vietnam.
While some might think we have produced yet another generation of materialistic and self-absorbed young people, those who serve today have broken the mold and stepped out as real men, and real women, who are already making their own way in life while protecting ours. They have learned, at the same time they have served and fought for us, that the real strength of a platoon, a battalion or a country is not based on worshipping at the altar of diversity or separateness. On the contrary, they know that our immigrant and castoff ancestors, many of whom came here in chains, forged a nation that was a melting pot stitched together by a shared sense of history, values, customs, hopes and dreams, all of which unified an earlier America into a whole, as opposed to an unruly gaggle of hyphenated names or multicultural individuals.

Read the rest of the article and learn about the courage of two of your countrymen at this link:

ttp://www.legion.org/magazine/101297/six-seconds-live