Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
A Remembrance
Last week more of this nation’s finest young men and
women were killed by a depraved suicide bomber.
Along with our young Marines, a Navy Hospital Corpsman
(“Doc”), and a Soldier, hundreds of civilian men, women, and children were
blown apart because they wanted to be free.
Our young American men and women were serving our nation
and helping refugees because they were always encouraged to be the best.
Other young men and women are sometimes commanded by
their perverse elders to be the worst.
There is a difference.
We have all seen our young men and women tend to the
babies, the sick, and the elderly, giving them water and food and comfort.
These are not propaganda images; every soldier, sailor, airman, and Marine who
has seen the elephant can tell you of the generosity and kindness of American
grunts toward displaced civilians. The notorious exceptions are just that,
exceptions, a failure to meet the standards expected of every G.I.
Our wonderful young men and women, hardly out of their
teens, died on their feet doing good, bravely and in the open.
Their murderer was a skulking wretch who could only cling
to his hatred and his bomb.
There is a difference.
The young men and women who were murdered last week did
not go to The Right Schools, did not wear custom-made uniforms with lots of
shiny stars and gew-gaws, and did not sip single-malt in oak-paneled rooms with
wealthy arms dealers I mean government contractors. They carried rifles and aid-bags and the
burden of duty, not briefcases, and they busted a sweat in the field, not on
the golf course. The concept of summering in the Hamptons was unknown to them;
they summered on the rifle range and in technical school
There is a difference.
They probably didn’t execute a salute as precisely and as
prettily as some of our political leaders who never made the first day of
recruit training, but their salutes meant something.
There is a difference.
These young men and women found a purpose.
They made a righteous difference.
They did good.
They
shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall
not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the
going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember
them.
-Laurence Binyon, “For the Fallen”
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