Why Do We Always Wait Too Long?
We always seem to wait. We wait to say what matters—to our veterans, families, and the people we love. Ask anyone who's lost someone, and you’ll hear the same quiet regret: I wish I’d had just one more conversation, one more moment, one more thank you.
And when it comes to our troops, the pattern is painfully familiar. We give our soldiers parades after they’re gone. We send flowers to graves instead of care packages to barracks. We remember the names once they’re carved in granite.
But honor, if it is to mean anything, must come while they still stand among us.
As we bow our heads for the fallen this Memorial Day, let’s lift our eyes to the living legends still beside us.
The 442nd Regimental Combat Team: Loyalty When None Was Given
Few of the stories of American valor are more soul-wrenching than those of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team. These men, mostly second-generation Japanese Americans, were stripped of their dignity by their own government. Their families were locked in internment camps behind barbed wire.
And yet they raised their hands to serve.
They fought in France, Italy, and Germany, not for applause, glory, or country, but for principle.
In Oct. 1944, near Biffontaine, France, the 442nd was ordered to rescue the Lost Battalion, 211 Texans, surrounded by the enemy in the Vosges Mountains.
The weather was miserable.
The forest thick.
The Germans entrenched.
Company I began the push with 185 men. Only eight made it out unharmed. Company K started with 186. Seventeen remained. Then came a flanking force of 55 soldiers sent behind enemy lines. Only five returned. The others were captured and spent the rest of the war in POW camps.
And yet they won.
They broke through.
They saved the 211.
Daniel Inouye: One-Armed Patriot, Full-Hearted Statesman
Among the 442nd was Daniel Inouye, who charged a machine gun nest after taking a grenade blast that shredded his right arm. He pried the live weapon from his own limp fingers, tucked it under the stump, and kept firing with his left hand.
He later became a U.S. senator, serving with dignity and resolve for decades.
He never made speeches about his bravery.
He just served.
Audie Murphy: The Little Texan Who Wouldn’t Quit
Five feet five inches tall. Barely over a hundred pounds.
But on a battlefield in France, Audie Murphy climbed atop a burning tank destroyer and used its machine gun to mow down wave after wave of Germans, alone, for more than an hour.
His Medal of Honor citation didn’t capture half of it. He saved lives because he refused to run.
Asked how he managed it, Murphy once said, “They were killing my friends.”
That was enough for him.
Richard Bong: America's Top Ace Who Just Wanted to Go Home
From tiny Poplar, Wisconsin, Richard Bong flew into legend.
In the skies over the Pacific, he downed 40 enemy planes, the most of any U.S. fighter pilot in history.
He didn’t strut. He didn’t write a book.
He just kept flying, kept protecting his brothers in arms.
After the war, Bong died while test-piloting a new jet near Los Angeles. It happened the same day America dropped the bomb on Hiroshima. His death barely made the news.
But it should have shaken the ground.
Roy Benavidez: Shot, Stabbed, and Still Saving Lives
In Vietnam, Master Sergeant Roy Benavidez jumped from a helicopter into enemy fire with nothing but a medic bag and an iron will. Shot multiple times, stabbed by a bayonet and blown up by a grenade, he kept going.
He carried eight wounded soldiers to safety.
When medics began zipping him into a body bag, he spat in their faces to prove he was still alive.
He later said, “I'd do it again for my men.”
He meant every word.
Modern Heroes: Different War, Same Warrior
The uniform may have changed. The enemies have as well. But the American Warrior has not.
Sergeant First Class Alwyn Cashe didn’t think twice. When his Bradley fighting vehicle hit an IED in Iraq, flames engulfed it.
Fuel soaked his uniform. He repeatedly ran into the fire, pulling his men from the inferno.
He was burned over 70 percent of his body. He died days later. His Medal of Honor was finally awarded in 2021, over 15 years too late.
Marine Sergeant Dakota Meyer was ordered to stand down as his brothers-in-arms were ambushed in a valley in Afghanistan.
He refused. Alone, he charged into Taliban fire five times in a gun truck, pulling wounded soldiers and their bodies from the kill zone.
He fought not to win glory, but to bring them home.
Technical Sergeant John Chapman, an Air Force combat controller, was believed to have died during a brutal firefight on a snow-covered ridge in Afghanistan.
But drone footage later showed he’d regained consciousness and continued to fight alone against enemy forces to protect a fallen Navy SEAL. He died defending that ground with no one left to see it but God.
These men are not outliers. They continue a bloodline of courage stretching back to Bunker Hill and Belleau Wood, Iwo Jima and Inchon, Khe Sanh, and Kandahar. Their names are known today only because their acts were so great they couldn’t be buried quietly.
And even then, we have only scratched the surface.
Beyond these Medal of Honor recipients are countless others: Rangers, Marines, tankers, medics, pilots, supply drivers, and chaplains. Soldiers who walked into the fire never came out.
Warriors who returned home with missing limbs, missing friends, or invisible wounds. Heroes who never asked for a parade called themselves brave and never got their due.
We highlighted a few, but many more deserve to be remembered.
President Trump: Restoring Dignity to the Rank
Under President Trump, the honor given to our military has changed course. He shows up, calls them heroes, visits Walter Reed, and listens. He doesn’t use the military as a backdrop; he sees them as the backbone.
Under his leadership, military recruitment has rebounded, not because war is glorified, but because the love of country is no longer treated as a sin.
Young Americans are stepping up again, not to serve a party, but to defend a nation that is learning to say thank you again.
From the Hills of France to the Deserts of Iraq: The Thread Holds
There are so many more stories that could have been told here.
Men whose names you’ll never hear in a press briefing.
Women who risked it all in convoy duty or combat medevacs.
Heroes who aren’t in history books, but are etched into the soul of this country.
Thankfully, some are making sure those stories aren’t lost. One of them is The Fat Electrician, a veteran and storyteller who uses humor, blunt honesty, and deep respect to resurrect the forgotten chapters of American military history.
His work ensures the next generation understands what sacrifice really means.
Say It Now, Before It’s Too Late
This Memorial Day, go to the parade. Stand for the anthem. Salute the flag.
But also, call your dad, text your buddy, and look the veteran at the gas station in the eye and say, “Thank you for your service.”
Because the men and women who fought didn’t do it for recognition; they did it for God.
For country. And for the man next to them.
Let us be the nation worthy of that kind of love.
And let us tell them so while they’re still here to hear it.
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