Today we all pause to reflect and remember the men and women who have served our country over the centuries. Many of whom, gave their lives on the Beaches of Normandy, in the Ardenne Forrest, at Verdun and the Somme, along the Viet Cong Trail and throughout foreign lands everywhere.
Even today our men and women serve proudly in the Middle East, volunteering their very lives for the freedoms we enjoy.
As we pause to say thank you to all those who have gone before us to secure our liberties, I am reminded of a letter written during the Civil War to a Mrs. Bixby, who lost two of her five sons during our civil strife. President Lincoln's words capture the grief and honor all must feel who have lost loved one's in service:
I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement of the Adjutant General of Massachusetts that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle.
I feel how weak and fruitless must be any word of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save.
I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.
Yours, very sincerely and respectfully,
A. Lincoln
