Soap Box

As we approach the day we set aside every year to honor those who have served our nation in our armed forces, my memory goes back to a blustery Sunday in 1941 - December 7 to be exact - when my family gathered around my grandparents big floor model radio to listen to a scratchy overseas broadcast informing us that Japanese war planes had attacked our Naval base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii doing massive damage to a major part of the Pacific Fleet that was moored there.

I was too young to grasp the true gravity of the situation but in the days to come I was to learn what going to war was all about; as uncles, cousins and acquaintances were called up in the draft or enlisted on their own and the war effort on the home front got into high gear.

Women left homemaking and went to work in defense plants building the planes and tanks our troops would need and even the kids got into the act collecting scrap metal used nylon stockings and even old newspapers that went to play some small part in winning the war.

World War II was a bloody affair and the casualty lists were high and hit home in every neighborhood in America as the cream of American youth manned the ships, tanks and planes challenging the Nazis and Japanese for every square foot of land, sea and airspace.

Farm kids from Iowa, boys off the inner city streets, small town kids who had never been out of the state they were born in, hurriedly trained and shipped thousands of miles to places with strange names where a well-trained army was waiting to start shooting at them.

I remember a June morning in 1944 when my mother got me up early in the morning to go to the Methodist Church we attended to join a packed house of our fellow Americans who had come together to pray for the soldiers who were storming the beaches of Normandy and being cut to ribbons by Nazi artillary and machine gunfire.

But on they came, wave after wave struggling for every bit of ground, scaling the cliffs in a murderous hail of gunfire, refusing to give an inch, fighting their way every onward until at the end of the longest day they broke through, sounding the death knell for the Nazi war machine and blazing a trail to Berlin where Adolph Hitler would take cyanide and commit suicide rather than face defeat at the hands of the Allies.

That, of course, was D-Day and with an estimated 10,000 casualties with 2,500 dead.

World War II was the bloodiest conflict in modern human history.

I learned in my formative years that only two things protect America, the Grace of Almighty God and the United States military. It was that way in 1941, it was that way in 1776, it was that way in Korea, in Vietnam, in Afghanistan, Iraq and every other war or skirmish the United States of America ever fought to preserve the peace and freedom of this nation.

The dedication, bravery and patriotism of the men and women who stand in the gap between us and our enemies cannot be overstated and must not be forgotten.

So on this upcoming Veteran's Day (11/11) I salute you, Mr. and Mrs. Veteran - wherever and however you served - I salute you and your families and express my heartfelt gratitude for your service, your dedication, your patriotism and your bravery.

God Bless our veterans.

What do you think?

Pray for our troops and the peace of Jerusalem.

God Bless America

� Charlie Daniels

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