Veterans Day, 2007, dawns with our Nation engaged in another world-wide war and probably overcommitted—stretched—in
every resource required in that war EXCEPT the hearts, body strength, and commitment of our troops.
They have only just begun to fight and intend to win—rather like those of us in this organization in 1950
when we finally went on the offensive, landed at INCHON, turned the City and the national government over
to President Rhee, broke out of the NAKDONG PERIMETER and drove the North Koreans back across the 38th Parallel.
Bloody reverses still remained in the KOREA WAR, and millions died—tens of thousands of them Americans,
millions of them Koreans—over two million South Koreans; the North Koreans and Chinese have never revealed
their losses.
And since? An uneasy truce for fifty-four years, over 2,000 more American deaths, and three million veterans
of KOREA, 1955-2007, and no peace treaty yet. Now our old enemies in that war are nuclear equipped.
FREEDOM IS NOT FREE—our war created that phrase but that is seldom acknowledged.
Today we honor veterans, living and dead, from all of our wars, and from times when there were no wars
but there was still a draft and men served several months of their lives as obligations of citizenship,
doing that which they would not have chosen to do on their own. Whether cooks or machine gunners, mechanics
or mortar men, mail clerks or tank crewmen, in hot weather, in cold, in exotic places or just two weeks
a year and one weekend a month drills at home, on NIKE sites, or living at home, ALL serving in the armed
forces of the United States: VETERANS!
Our Nation owes its VETERANS all that is reasonable to expect until the day they pass away, regardless
of their type, place, and duration of service—so long as that service was honorable. That debt is part of
the on-going costs of defense and is not to be ducked when making budget decisions. It is owed and was promised.
Part of the costs— as in FREEDOM IS NOT FREE.
Our service in “our” war was not in vain: we were never whipped because WE NEVER QUIT! And our young
men and women at war today will never be whipped because they will not quit. The veterans from the Vietnam
War did not quit—the quitters were right here at home. We can see and hear a few here at home trying that
dance of the defeated—quitters—again trying to convince the rest of us that we cannot trust our fighting
forces who ask nothing other than to be allowed to win AND be assured that the Nation’s promises to them
are honored. FREEDOM IS NOT FREE.
While we are honoring veterans today, let us not neglect to honor their parents, wives, and children
who also served their enlistments of separation, single parenting, juggling bills, fighting health struggles
ALONE because the Nation needed their loved ones. Thank God that the VA and others are beginning to
seriously realize that PTSD and broken bodies are lifelong sentences for our loved ones as well as ourselves—PTSD
and broken bodies are contagious in a family, part of the COST OF FREEDOM. We should have realized that
about the large number of broken homes associated with Vietnam veterans instead of berating those veterans
as somehow deficient. They were let down by their Nation.
We did not quit in KOREA and today the northern aggressors and their supporters do not own or occupy
a square millimeter of the Republic of Korea. Following our example of sacrifice, the REPUBLIC OF KOREA
did not quit either. Today they are a leading nation of the world.
Our fighting forces will not quit in the war on terror.
FREEDOM IS NOT FREE. Thank you, veterans of all honorable service, in any of the Services, in any era
of our history.
National President, KWVA/US
Chairman of the Board