The conditions of freedom

by Stan Lowe, Chairman (retired), Wyoming Veterans’ Commission
Tuesday, June 3, 2008 1:52 PM MDT

Major Gen. Ed Wright, the Adjutant General of Wyoming, was this year’s Oregon Trail State Veterans Cemetery Memorial Day keynote speaker.

His excellent address was well received by more than 200 citizens that braved stormy, wet weather to attend.

The ceremony was held inside Veterans of Foreign Wars Memorial Post #9439. The cemetery chapel, usually used in foul weather for Memorial Day and Veterans’ Day programs, was unavailable; construction to double the chapel’s seating capacity is not yet finished.

Wright asked us to remember the 130,000-plus soldiers, marines, airmen and sailors serving in Iraq and Afghanistan.

This global war against terrorism, he emphasized, is primarily a ground war.

Airmen and sailors constitute about 16 percent of those serving on the ground doing “non-standard missions.”

He explained, “That means they are side by side with the ground forces, and all are doing a tremendous job.”

He talked about two Wyoming connected men killed in combat since last year’s Memorial Day: Staff Sgt. David Julian of Evanston and Pfc. Corey Hicks, whose father lives in Casper. Julian died March 10 in Baghdad killed by a suicide bomber, and Hicks died May 2 when an IED blasted his vehicle.

“Sacrifice of military members is not new to our country,” Wright noted, citing losses in other wars.

In the 80 months of the Revolutionary War, there were 10,623 casualties (killed, missing and injured), or about 55 Americans dying each month of the war.

During the 37 months of the Korean War, there were 136,935 casualties -n 909 Americans dying in combat each month of the war.

In 90 months of the Vietnam War, there were 211,471 casualties n- 526 Americans dying in combat each month of the war.

All of them pale, of course, compared to the two World Wars.

In WWII, there were 1,078,162 American casualties n- 6,639 Americans dying in combat each month of the year.

Wright paused midway through his speech to induct two people from Casper: Rev. Leonard L. Robinson, a Bataan Death March survivor, and Red McKendree, also a WWII veteran, into a Field Artillery fraternity, the Honorable Order of Saint Barbara.

The day Pearl Harbor was attacked, Robinson was in the Philippines with the New Mexico National Guard manning anti-aircraft guns during Japanese bomber raids on Clark Air Field.

Four months later, the embattled, exhausted U.S. troops on Bataan surrendered. Robinson became a prisoner of war and suffered many killer diseases without needed medical care, but miraculously he recovered.

He was taken to Japan. Though weakened by starvation and extreme weight loss, he was worked and beaten as a slave laborer.

McKendree served with the Navy in the Pacific, seeing action at Saipan, the Marshall Islands and Philippines.

After the war, he joined the Wyoming Army National Guard’s 3rd Battalion, 49th Field Artillery, and drove a 155MM self-propelled howitzer.

Wright resumed his speech. Today, in a country of 300 million, there are approximately 1 million serving in the Army. That is one-third of 1 percent. Sixteen million served during WWII, and today we have 1 million in our Army n that number includes the Army Reserve and the Army National Guard.

The number of our national elected officials who have served in the Armed Forces is alarmingly small and getting smaller all of the time. These are the officials who will vote and determine how this nation treats its veterans.

There is a stanza from a song that goes, “Suppose they had a war and nobody came. Wouldn’t that be wonderful?”

What I am concerned about is, suppose they had a war and only the enemy came. We can’t afford that.

Let’s agree to teach our children and our children’s children the value of sacrifice, and work, and virtue -n these are the necessary conditions of freedom.

Let us teach them the love of country through our words and deeds. Let us teach them that some things are worth standing up for n- and some things are worth dying for.

Abraham Lincoln once said, “Gold is good in its place; but living, brave, patriotic men, are better than gold.”

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