I watched the flag pass by one day,
It fluttered in the breeze;
A young Marine saluted it,
And then he stood at ease.
I looked at him in uniform,
So young, so tall, so proud;
With hair cut square and eyes alert,
He’d stand out in any crowd.
I thought… how many men like him
Had fallen through the years?
How many died on foreign soil?
How many mothers’ tears?
How many pilots’ planes shot down
How many died at sea
How many foxholes were soldiers’ graves
No, Freedom is not Free.
I heard the sound of Taps one night,
When everything was still;
I listened to the bugler play,
And felt a sudden chill;
I wondered just how many times
That Taps had meant “Amen”
When a flag had draped a coffin
Of a brother or a friend;
I thought of all the children,
Of the mothers and the wives,
Of fathers, sons and husbands.
With interrupted lives.
I thought about a graveyard
At the bottom of the sea,
Of unmarked graves in Arlington.
No. Freedom is not Free!
Yes, freedom isn’t free. Its cost is beyond all imagination. I know, because, you see, I’ve “been there.”
I spent eight and a half months as a patient in the orthopedic ward at the VA Hospital in Palo Alto, California, and during that time, I saw the results of war in ways that most of you can only learn about second-hand; broken and permanently-scarred and maimed bodies without limbs, destroyed minds and permanently ruined health……and lives forever changed; mostly for the worst.
Not only is freedom not free; the price of that freedom…….is not cheap. Someone once said that the Price of Liberty is Eternal Vigilance, and that’s just as true today as it was so many years ago in our country’s history.
Let us never forget.