It’s a freedman killed on the ramparts at New Orleans. He knew what being free meant.
It’s a Marine crumpled against the gate of Chapultepec Castle still holding his musket, its bayonette thrust into the great wooden doors.
It’s a soldier from the Army of Nothern Virginia and a young bugler from Maryland laying side by side in a common grave at Antiatam.
It’s two Doughboys charging a bunker in the Argonne forest. They disappear into the mist never to be seen again.
It’s CDR. John Waldron getting into his torpedo bomber at the Battle of Midway.
It’s John Basilone at Iwo Jima.
It’s a B-24 taking a direct hit from an 88 over Germany. There are no parachutes.
It’s a trooper from the 82nd dead at his .30 cal with frozen corpses in gray all around him at Bastogne.
It’s a dead Marine being carried aloft by his friends out of the Chosin Resevoir.
It’s a Montagnard chief carving a burial totem for a Special Forces Sargeant.
It’s SFC Paul Smith at the gun of an M113 with 13 bullet holes in his vest and one thru his neck as he protected 100 wounded comrades at the airport in Baghdad.
Its a SEAL team giving a thumbs up as they board a Chinook headed for a house in Sayd Abad, Afghanistan.
It’s the sound of Taps being played over a simple marble tomb at Arlington with an inscription; “Here Rests in Honored Glory An American Soldier Known But To God”
- Sean Spoonts
(Image Credit DVIDHubs.net: A Marine with Headquarters and Support Company, 1st Battalion, 24th Marines, speaks during the memorial ceremony in honor of Corporal Mark D. Kidd from Milford, MI, aboard Camp Baharia, Iraq, Feb. 3. Regimental Combat Team 6 is deployed with II Marine Expeditionary Force in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom in the Al Anbar Province of Iraq (Multi-National Forces-West) to develop the Iraqi Security Forces, facilitate the development of official rule of law through democratic government reforms and continue the development of a market based economy centered on Iraqi Reconstruction.) (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Cpl Samuel D. Corum)
