Their lives ended in places called Belleau Wood,
The Argonne, Omaha Beach, Salerno and halfway around the world on
Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Pork Chop Hill, the Chosin Reservoir, and in
a hundred rice paddies and jungles of a place called Vietnam.
Under one such marker lies a young man--Martin Treptow--who left
his job in a small town barber shop in 1917 to go to France with
the famed Rainbow Division. There, on the western front, he was
killed trying to carry a message between battalions under heavy
artillery fire.
We are told that on his body was found a diary. On the flyleaf
under the heading, "My Pledge," he had written these words:
"America must win this war. Therefore, I will work, I will save, I
will sacrifice, I will endure, I will fight cheerfully and do my
utmost, as if the issue of the whole struggle depended on me
alone."
The crisis we are facing today does not require of us the kind of
sacrifice that Martin Treptow and so many thousands of others were
called upon to make. It does require, however, our best effort,
and our willingness to believe in ourselves and to believe in our
capacity to perform great deeds; to believe that together, with
God's help, we can and will resolve the problems which now
confront us.
And, after all, why shouldn't we believe that? We are Americans.
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