There are 8 men and women I think about every Memorial Day. I have for more years than I care to count.

I had just taken command of a battalion when my operations NCO walked into the command post with the kind of quiet in his voice that rearranges a man's life. A helicopter was down. I started walking up the road toward the smoke. When I came over the rise, there was no helicopter. Only a black patch burned into the earth in the rough outline of where the aircraft had come to rest. Inside that outline, 8 small bumps. The silence that followed is one I have never been able to describe to anyone who was not standing there with me.

33 years in the uniform of this Nation taught me that the fallen are not asking for our tears. They are asking for our fidelity. They are asking whether we will defend the Constitution they died protecting and whether we will stand watch over this Republic in peace as faithfully as they stood watch over it in war.

This Memorial Day, stand up a little straighter, hold your children a little closer, love your Country a little louder, and pray a little harder. The watch they kept must not be dropped on our shift.

https://genflynn.substack.com/p/a-country-worthy-of-them