Remembering Our Troops Still Matters

Sunday, April 11, 2010
TOWNHALL DAILY:
Salena Zito

GETTYSBURG – South of Emmitsburg Road,
along the Civil War battlefield here, 20 men gather
around a monument to Latham’s Battery.

They toil at the simple memorial honoring the
North Carolina artillery unit, cleaning cannons
and resetting fallen rocks on a low stone wall.
Most of the men are Civil War re-enactors and
are wearing period uniforms.

“Colonel” Kevin Stone, one of the volunteers,
says they gather to do this twice a year.
“If we don’t do it,” he explains, “who will?”

With few exceptions in our history, we Americans
have honored our soldiers, living and dead, past
and present.

The nation is in its longest period of continual war now,
although it faces a different kind of warfare and a different
kind of enemy. The average American has not had to make
significant sacrifices this time, unlike most previous wartime generations.

Jeff Brauer, an associate professor of history at
Keystone College, thinks that fact actually has led
to heightened patriotism.
“Without a daily outlet for appreciation, there has been
an increased migration to memorials such as Gettysburg,
the World War II, Vietnam and Korean war memorials
(in Washington), to show respect and gratitude for our
current and past soldiers.”

The man responsible for managing the wars in
Iraq and Afghanistan, Gen. David Petraeus,
says he hopes his troops are honored today –
and generations from now –
as the selfless men and women they are.

“All those now in uniform raised their right hand
long after the attacks of 9/11,” he said, from Poland
where he was attending meetings.
“Even those serving before then have re-enlisted or
remained on active duty. They knew they'd be asked
to deploy, and yet they have continued to serve, voluntarily.”

These men and women continue to raise their right hands
even as they confront tough, often barbaric enemies, he says.
“They perform the most challenging of missions in cultures
different from our own.
“They have done magnificently, and they truly are the
very best of our country.”

Retired Army staff sergeant “Wild” Bill Guarnere
knows about challenging missions. At age 18 he
made his first combat jump on D-Day, part of the
Allied invasion of France during World War II.

A member of Easy Company, 2nd Battalion,
506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division,
Guarnere said the thought never crossed his mind then that
what he was doing would be remembered generations later.

“We were there to protect the freedoms of our country,”
Guarnere said by phone from his home in South Philly.
“That was our focus, the home front and our families.
You have no idea what freedom means, until you lose it.
That is what we thought about, that is what we fought for.”

His heroic actions, chronicled in the HBO series
“Band of Brothers,” cost him his right leg and earned
him the Silver Star, two Bronze Stars and two Purple Hearts.

Guarnere has traveled to Iraq and met Petraeus
(he calls the general “a very good man”) last year
in Philadelphia. He doesn’t mince words about the
nation he gave so much to defend:
“Nobody gives two damns about the war today.
All they talk about in Washington is health care.”

Last Sunday a group of American soldiers gathered
in Baghdad at the site where, seven years earlier,
Paul R. Smith, a young Army platoon sergeant from
the 3rd Infantry Division, defended his small unit against
overwhelming odds. As Smith’s relentless machine-gun
fire broke the enemy attack, a bullet took his life.

Smith posthumously received the Medal of Honor.

Major General Tony Cucolo, commander of the
3rd Infantry Division and of all U.S. forces in northern Iraq,
was among the group. “As I looked around the small gathering
in a dusty, walled-in corner of Baghdad,” he said afterward,
“I marveled at how far some of the soldiers had travelled that
day for a ceremony that would last about 30 minutes.”

Elected officials could learn from the military,
according to Bert Rockman, a political science professor
at Purdue University.

“It would be nice if our political loonies took some
lessons from how the military functions through teamwork, assimilation, cooperation and looking after one another,”
he explains. “It’s not perfect, but it’s a model for how we
can best function to reach outcomes vital to our collective future.”

We can never do enough for those who serve our country.
They ask only for respect for what they do and their
willingness to do it for the rest of us.

And they ask – as all American soldiers have,
since 1775 – that their efforts not be forgotten.

In loving memory of U.S. Army Sergeant William J. Zito,
76th Infantry, Company G, World War II.