A few images to justify the cause

We must never forget who gets the credit for the freedoms we have, of which we should be eternally grateful.

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?

And how many have come home with scars that they will bear the rest of their lives?

No, freedom isn't 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 has draped a coffin, was it for a brother, a sister, a father, a mother, another member of a family or a dear 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 and of all the unmarked graves of American soldiers in Arlington and around the world today.

No, freedom isn't free .