My Pledge, Our Pledge

The stories still ring in my ears.  Themes of danger, deception, break down, and salvation filled the epic.  For years I sat and listened to harrowing stories of crossing the English Channel during the war, of betrayal by a local boy, and the terror of rooting out the Nazis after Normandy.  The stories came from my grandfather with phrases like the "boys in the foxhole" and men who had names like "Frenchie".  

He often recounted the story about the bullet zinging off a tank near his ear.  And he swore that is where he lost his hearing.  He spoke of that English Channel crossing, oh did he, and that you would never get him on a boat again.  And then there was the life changing moment.  The German foxhole conversion where he met his Savior and made a deal with Him, that my grandfather kept to his dying day.

You have probably never heard of Rozelle Bissette.  And to him, that would have been just fine.  But he served his country.  He gave not his life, but his mental health, when the war finally had taken its toll and he was forced to leave for a hospital.  His job during the war, in part, was to go from door-to-door forcing his way in and rooting out any Nazis that remained.  Can we even imagine what that was like?  Getting ready to break down a door - not knowing who or what was waiting on the other side to kill you, I cannot begin to fathom.

And many of us never will.  

We will never fully comprehend what that generation and many other generations, before and after World War II lost or left on foreign beaches in swampy jungles, desert plains, and blown out buildings.  And yet my grandfather, your spouse, siblings, and children have faced death - so that you and I may breathe life.  Is that not freedom?  Freedom is expression of the soul.  Is freedom not - life?

With this great freedom, has come great sacrifice.  And in our times today as North Korea threatens our border, as Iran punishes those who cling to and long for life, and even democracy is threatened in central America - you and I must make a pledge.  A pledge similar to what my grandfather made, that our forefathers held, a pledge of old that you and I must re-vow and then carry to a new generation.  A pledge similar to one made by a fallen American soldier - who would later have his story told.

President Reagan recounted the sacrifice of this soldier in his first inaugural address.  In referring to the grave markers of Arlington, our former President related the following:

Under one such a marker lies a young man, Martin Treptow, who left his job in a small town barber shop in 1917 to go to France with the famed Rainbow Division. There, on the Western front, he was killed trying to carry a message between battalions under heavy fire. We're told that on his body was found a diary. On the flyleaf under the heading, “My Pledge,” he had written these words:

"America must win this war. Therefore, I will work; I will save; I will sacrifice; I will endure; I will fight cheerfully and do my utmost, as if the issue of the whole struggle depended on me alone."

The crisis we are facing today does not require of us the kind of sacrifice that Martin Treptow and so many thousands of others were called upon to make. It does require, however, our best effort, and our willingness to believe in ourselves and to believe in our capacity to perform great deeds; to believe that together with God’s help we can and will resolve the problems which now confront us.

And after all, why shouldn’t we believe that? We are Americans.

And on this Fourth of July we again are facing perilous times.  May history record of this moment that our generation answered the call, that we paid the price, and kept the pledge.  May our commitment to American freedom be so steadfast, our willingness to sacrifice run so deep, our steadfastness concerning liberty be so sure that the future must write of us, you and I, that we fought as if the struggle depended upon us alone.  And as the historians judge our work, our victory, may their conclusion, the final sentence on the history of the present day report, "and of course they did all they could do, they were Americans."

(For my grandfather, my family, who taught me about patriotism, America, and freedom.  We will ever remember his words, "kids we live in the greatest country in the world.")