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