Veteran's Day

Thank you for inviting me here today to join you in remembering the brave men and women who have served our nation.

It is a time honored, solemn tradition in our nation to pause at a particular time, one specific day each fall -- to honor Americans who secured for us the peace and freedom we enjoy each and every day.

The designated time is the eleventh hour, of the eleventh day of the eleventh month --commemorating the precise time and date of the Armistice ending World War One in 1918.

Congress passed a law in 1938, officially making November 11th -- Armistice Day -- a national holiday. And in 1954, another law changed the name to Veterans Day, formally recognizing it as the time to honor all who have served.

But the tradition we honor on this day has much deeper roots.

It began not in the fall of 1918, but in a springtime long before -- a late April day at the edge of a small town, much like this, in New England.

There, a worn group of colonial Americans stood their ground against a column of highly trained British soldiers.

When the smoke cleared from the "shots heard round the world," eight American "Minutemen" lay dead, their blood soaking into the earth of Lexington, Massachusetts...

... the first to be spilled in defense of the principles of freedom and independenceupon which our nation was founded.

Today, more than two hundred years later, this legacy of sacrifice still extends unbroken through generations of Americans ... men and women who answered the call to arms, a call that has often led to danger, injury, and, for some, captivity or death.

Today, as we salute those who paid the price of freedom, we see our history in their ranks -- from those "Minutemen" fighting for freedom in the American Revolution, to men and women in the desert camouflage uniforms of the Persian Gulf War.

Some mark this day by pulling out leather-bound volumes of photographs and bundles of yellowed letters. With these reminders, they look back through memory's eye, to momentous times in our nation's past. The images they see are not of people old or gray... but of people forever young, forever full of life, forever frozen in time.

-- The photo of a World War One "doughboy," posing with his squad, the week before he heard the final whistle blow at Belleau Wood.

-- The picture of a smiling sailor, standing with his buddies aboard ship, before steering a landing craft ashore at Omaha Beach in World War II.

-- The snapshot of a tough Marine sergeant, bundled in heavy clothing and joking about the cold, before the fighting at the Chosin Reservoir in Korea.

-- The picture of a serious-looking young Air Force crew chief, standing in front of his C-130 aircraft ... before flying a last mission to resupply a jungle firebase inVietnam.

-- And in cities large and small throughout this great land there are monuments and markers with the names of war dead from those communities. Each name marks the end of the dreams of some young American whose life was cut short in the defense of freedom. Freedom not just for themselves, but for everyone. Not just for today, but for all time.

This Veterans Day has particular meaning, because it falls 50 years after the end of World War II. Veterans of that war, perhaps the defining event of this century, and their families recall names such as "Omaha Beach," "Anzio," "Iwo Jima," and "Guadalcanal." And they recall hundreds of smaller, nameless battles -- in barren fields, and burned-out cities ...

The debt America owes its veterans -- those who offered their lives so that others might be free -- was never more clear than it was 50 years ago.

How did these ordinary men and women rise to such extraordinary valor?

Why did they leave their homes and families behind for the dangers of the battlefield?

Why have so many of our veterans been willing to shed their blood and risk their lives in foreign lands then and now?

The answer is simple -- they were answering their country's call. It is one of our nation's great strengths that men and women from EVERY neighborhood, and EVERY ethnic background have answered that call and continue to heed it today. And it has had momentous consequences, not only for their own lives, but for the ultimate freedom of our nation and all of us here today.

So as we salute our veterans, we can reflect that, long after the guns fall silent, the cost of freedom continues. This is a day to thank every American who has served to protect our democratic way of life.

And a close look at the history of America's wars, reveals a sobering fact: For all the high-tech weapons systems -- things like "stealth airplanes, smart-bombs and patriot missiles" and all the rest of the modern arsenal ...

... the tide of battle has always turned -- and likely always will turn -- on the ability and the willingness of a young American ...

... tired, hungry, scared and homesick -- to get up under fire, in a strange place, to go forward to get the job done.

Our history today is what it is because those young people -- many of them here with us today, no longer so young -- did keep faith with their country. It is up to us, now, to keep faith with them.

And so on this Veterans Day we join in offering a collective salute of love and appreciation for those who served and sacrificed. Today, we say to them -- and to all those in the ranks of heroes they have proudly joined -- Thank you!