What they became {memorial day}

Land that I love
Originally uploaded by Kudzu and Koolaid

They didn't set out to be remembered...
they didn't want to stand as the symbol of the cost of war...
they were young kids
idealistic
with a love for their country
that drove them
...
into deserts
and jungles
edges of oceans
and into countries so far from the one they loved...

they didn't want to be remembered
they wanted
to come home,
they wanted football on Saturdays,
to tool around town with their buddies,
to kiss their girl
and Momma's pie on Sunday...

they didn't want to be thousands of miles away...
with cramped quarters
sticky and hot
foreign smells
little comforts...

they didn't want to watch their youthful ideas disappear
as they watched the life ebb from the bodies of their friends
there with them
in this place so far away from what they did want...

they didn't set out to be remembered
they set out to be soldiers...

and in strapping on their boots
ones that ultimately stood empty accompanied by their gun

they will forever be remembered
for what they became...

HEROES

thank you to every man and woman that has bravely worn a uniform, deployed and didn't come home...my heart is forever thankful for you ...

"War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made so and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself."
~John Stuart Mill

You can only protect your liberties in this world by protecting the other man's freedom. You can only be free if I am free.--Clarence Darrow