I know that this is a month early, but I wanted to get this message out now in case I get kicked off Facebook before Memorial Day. The following is a message I originally presented on Memorial Day in 2015 in Baytown, Texas, but has been revised for presentation today. I pray it blesses you and honors those who paid the ultimate price to secure our freedom.
CPT (Ret.) Terry Michael Hestilow
U.S. Army, Infantry (Airborne)
May 1, 2024
To honor our fallen warriors this Memorial Day we must commit to quit quitting!
Ladies and Gentlemen, thank you for the opportunity and honor to come and celebrate with you the memory of the lives of these patriots who lived among us, yet in times of war sacrificed their lives for freedom here at home, and to be a bulwark against tyranny around the globe.
This is a day we set aside, as a nation, to remember, to honor, and, yes, to grieve our losses of those we hold so dear as members of our families and our communities who paid with their lives that we might live free at home.
And what is this loss? It is first of all the loss of those brave souls who counted not their lives to be too precious to be willingly given in defense of home, in defense of family, in defense of our Constitutional republic, in defense of freedom, and in defense of our sacred American ideals enshrined in our Bill of Rights!
And who are these brave souls whom we lovingly honor and cherish? They are our sons and daughters. They are our brothers and our sisters. They are our fathers and mothers, aunts, uncles, cousins, friends and classmates. They are men and women of every race and creed common to our American People, who have lived and shared their lives with and among us. Indeed, like the double “A” emblazoned on the unit insignia of the 82nd Airborne Division, they are regardless of assignment–in the end–truly “All American”!
And what is it that we remember of these men and women? We remember that they were not gods. They were not fabled super-heroes; but rather, they were men and women made of flesh and bone and blood even as are we. They marched to battle while yet they held their hopes and dreams of a day beyond the enemy they had to face–and defeat–to live those hopes and dreams in peace … and to provide that safety and peace to those they left at home. They prayed that the cost that they would have to pay would not ultimately demand their lives, and they held hope in prayers without yielding that one day they would be able to return home to those they loved and left behind. But with each step they took, they knew that the price they might have yet to pay for that peace and liberty might be their very lives; yet onward they marched, prepared to die for us so that we could have what might be out of reach to they themselves.
But what other costs were paid in their selfless sacrifices? It is a cost seldom calculated. To be sure, it is a cost that is impossible to calculate! We often hear people speak of the “national treasure” that must be spent on war. They erroneously equate such treasure in dollars and cents; but that is the accounting of fools who have never been asked to pay the price of war! For the treasure we have paid in war is not properly counted in dollars; but rather, in the blood of patriots!
But, yet, the cost is even greater still! For we cannot count what is lost when an American falls in combat and they never return home to marry, to have a family, and to contribute in their labor to make their community better! Who can begin to imagine the families that we shall never have the opportunity to know because service members never returned to establish them? And we can never calculate the contributions these forever lost children would have made to strengthen and build our nation–but were never born because their father or mother “to be” never came home to have them! The cost can only be staggeringly high! So this cost, too, we have already paid, but we can never know of its measure or its magnitude, for we shall never know the long line of families that could have been–the Americans we needed so much to continue to build our great nation–if not for the cost of war! Could it be that one of those children that might have been born of–say–a Vietnam veteran–might have discovered the cure for cancer? The solemn truth is that we shall never know! The cost is greater–far greater–than the wisest brains could ever conclude to our nation and to their families left behind under markers of stone in these cemeteries.
And before moving on, let us also consider the very real costs suffered by the children born and left behind by our fallen warriors—those whom our nation needs to grow into fine citizens even though their loving fathers or mothers fell in combat. Never forget, contrary to contemporary ideas about the lack of any need for fathers in a child’s life today, that these warrior parents, by God’s design and command, have a unique responsibility in the lives of their own children that is critical in the development of their children for the moral training, family moorings, and development of sound social standards of behavior in their offspring. It isn’t popular to say this today, but children—both girls and boys—need fathers and mothers in their lives and in their homes—present for duty—to provide the very foundations for good citizenship. Consequently, when moms and dads die in service of our nation’s security, they are forever, from the day they fall in combat, absent from the training and development of their children who still need them to teach them—and demonstrate for them—the values they, and we, need to have instilled in their lives and personalities. So, here too, our nation has paid a terrible price in the children that these warriors have left behind who will not have those critical influences of parenting to guide them and make them productive and good citizens. I am, of course, not supposing that they will not become fine citizens without their lost parent’s loving guidance; but as we look at our society today we can hardly doubt that this cost is one that we bear as a nation partly due to our loss of our nation’s warriors in combat.
So, is this a diatribe against war?
Never!
To be sure, war is, of course, a terrible thing; and it is to be avoided–but not at all costs!
There are always choices that must be made. Will we live in liberty; or, tyranny? Will we be free; or, slaves? Importantly, will these threats—like we see in Venezuela today—come against us alone, or, will they come against our families; or our grandchildren also if we fail to fight?
Make no mistake; the enemy will always force the choice upon us.
We can continue to pretend that the oceans can provide us barriers from our enemies; and that we can lounge in peace while the globe is aflame–but that is always a lie! Today, as Americans learned at such a high cost in the 20th century, such barriers are illusory. Indeed, our enemies have already attacked us repeatedly on our own soil throughout these first two decades of the 21st century. Our homeland is under continuing lethal assault from many enemies, both abroad and now at home—and, still, we retreat.
Today, as we remember our fallen dead at the hands of our enemies, let us, for a moment, reassess how our nation has really valued—or mocked—the costs of these American heroes and their families.
Let me pause for one brief moment to clarify of whom I am about to speak. I speak now not of you who clearly recognize the solemnity of the day; but of so-called “countrymen” who believe that Memorial Day is about nothing more than picnics, Memorial Day sales, and the like. I am speaking of the absurd ones who pretend to support us, yet try to distance themselves from what they, themselves, ultimately sent us to do (we are a Constitutional republic, after all, and in our military we send our “representatives” to act in our name to keep America safe and free). With a slap on our shoulders they smile and assure us, “I support you …” and then we feel the knife inserted between our ribs “… but I don’t support the war [that we sent you to fight].” In doing so they mock us with a greater villainy than the communist sympathizers who met us when we returned from Vietnam to spit upon us and call us “baby killers”! Today, they pretend to be our friends; yet, after sending us to do what every American service member before us has done—for all the same right reasons—and in the same integrity with every war that Americans have ever been sent to fight—they smile and heap guilt upon us, charging now that we had no proper reason to go, to fight, and to kill in their name. It is no wonder that we lose a veteran to suicide every 65 minutes in America! And what would the generation of Americans have done, military and civilian alike, if a fool did that to a returning service member in 1946? That kind of support is pure mockery!
Excepting the great generations who persevered through all our wars, and especially through World War II, who preserved the world through nothing less than a miracle from the flames of tyranny, I am sad to say that with the few exceptions of Granada, Panama, and Desert Storm, that throughout my own lifetime, and in all of my military service, from Vietnam to Afghanistan, the People of the United States have NEVER committed her service members to a war that the nation was not–in the end–willing and determined to quit rather than win!
Let that sink in.
From the date of my birth in the middle of last century to today, with the exception of Granada, Panama, and Desert Storm, the American People have walked away from every war we have fought, and sold our victories in combat, and the blood of our patriots, for—absolutely nothing at all!
We fought the communists in Korea and lost 33,651 of our service members–and then sold our victories over communist forces bent on taking over the Korean peninsula, driving them back from their terrible gains in the South, for nothing more than an armistice (a cease fire only). Allowing them that base of operations in North Korea has allowed three generations of communist tyrants to exercise bloody control over a land that they took—they stole—with Red Chinese support while crushing the hopes of the North Korean people and threatening their neighbors and the world with nuclear weapons.
We fought the communists in Vietnam and lost 58,219 service members. And then—leaving communist forces occupying areas of South Vietnam—we made a so-called “peace” with the Communists, and therein betrayed the South Vietnamese people. In our retreat from all the victories American forces had won in Vietnam, we abandoned our commitments and forgot the American and allied blood that had been shed to help our South Vietnamese allies, our free friends, to gain the freedoms we take daily for granted. We gave the communist aggressors South Vietnam for a prize on April 30, 1975—and all the dying for freedom was for nothing.
The United States committed military forces into Africa in 1992 to assist the starving people of Somalia; but when war lords resisted us, our government and the people of our nation did not back our forces up, but fled our commitments to the small nation without a thought for the blood of the 19 service members who died to bring aid to the Somali people and stability against the lawless terror and starvation perpetrated by the tribal war lords. We sold our American blood for nothing!
We fought and overthrew the terrorist Iraqi government under Saddam Hussein and the Islamic terrorist groups and al Qaeda in Iraq costing us 4,424 service members. Then, after gaining decisive victories throughout Iraq over every enemy in Iraq that rose up against the good we brought, and after we effectively stabilized the nation—against the advice of history and the best national defense counsel at his call—President Barack Obama and his political power base, determined to please a population that abhors our military commitments and the good we bring to people around the globe in the name of Liberty, abandoned all the good we had done and dismissed our hard bought combat victories for an empty withdrawal of our forces leaving a terrible vacuum to be filled by an even worse enemy, the Islamic State. And so, with that surrender and withdrawal of American military forces from the new and struggling nation, Iraq was consumed once again with the dark and terrible death that walks wherever ISIS is free to roam. Today, because we turned our back and walked away, the bloodthirsty terrorists of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and the equally bloodthirsty nation of Iran, are left to fight over the carcass of what was Iraq, Syria and the Kurdish lands. We sold the blood of our Iraqi veterans … for nothing!
We fought the Taliban in Afghanistan–the very place from which the terrorists launched their attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001. In our war in Afghanistan we have, to date, lost at least 2,216 service members; and now, we are poised to simply walk away from our victories allowing the murderous Taliban to return to control in Afghanistan in even greater strength than they have had in decades. And we sold our heroes’ blood for nothing—and we are selling our Afghan friends to slaughter.
So, how do we now honor the lives—the multiplied lives including the families we shall never know of these 98,528 soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines who died in these referenced wars we have quit—that we have refused to win—since 1945?
I am reminded of a quoted conversation by Colonel Harry G. Summers, Jr., in his book “On Strategy: a critical analysis of the Vietnam War” [Presidio Press, 1982].
During the Four Party Joint Military “peace” negotiations in Hanoi, Vietnam, on April 25, 1975, Colonel Summers had a conversation with Colonel Tu, Chief of the North Vietnamese (DRV) Delegation.
Colonel Summers challenged Colonel Tu, “You know you never defeated us on the battlefield.”
Colonel Tu thought on Summer’s words momentarily and replied, “That may be so, but it is also irrelevant.”
Why was it irrelevant?
It was irrelevant because our enemy refused to give up—and we refused to win!
We often hear the phrase, “Tell the truth in love.”
Well, here it is. The only way we can honor these—from every war we have ever fought—in every period—who have fought for the exact same reason that each and every American has ever fought in any war—is to make a firm commitment, and follow through to quit one more time.
We must—and it is a “must” if we are to remain free in the future—quit quitting our war commitments! We must quit quitting our victories on the battlefields! We must quit turning our backs on the precious blood our patriots have paid to ensure that we maintain our freedoms now and into the future! And we must quit quitting on our sacred word to our own people, our friends, and our enemies!
It is sad to say, but we need the resolve of our Communist enemies, like Colonel Tu, whom we fought and beat in Vietnam! We defeated them in combat, but they won because they would never quit and we decided that we could never win. For the sake of America’s future, our children, and our grandchildren’s future, we need to determine, as did the generation of Americans who fought and won World War II, that we will never again quit! It is only in such a resolution to never again quit our wars short of decisive victory that we can truly, as a People, honor those who gave their lives for us to live free.
These men and women we honor here today never quit. They gave their all for us. They deserve better than the American people of today have demonstrated in return for their sacrifice.
Let us renew our courage, our strength, and our resolve. There ARE wars we must fight! Let us meet the challenges ahead in strength, with resolve and a determination to meet every enemy and beat him with overwhelming force and an unmitigated commitment to victory every step of the way—and to defeat every enemy we face in depth where they may be found. If we do that, if we make such a commitment to never again walk away from the missions our patriots spilled their blood—and that of our enemies—to accomplish freedom’s victory, we will have to make fewer choices for war in the future, because fewer enemies will want to pay the price that they must pay to fight us. And if we do that, we will find that we will have to sacrifice fewer men and women to war and, instead, see them flourish and produce happily at home as they build healthy families. Indeed, if we do that we will truly make America once again the great nation God ordained that it should be when He established it.
Let us never again send Americans to fight a war that we are not wholly committed—as a People—as a nation—to win. If we will do that, we will, indeed, honor our patriots properly, with gratitude, resolve, and integrity with them that we might live in the peace they purchased with their sacred blood to finish the mission.
Thank you.
Captain (Retired) Terry M. Hestilow, United States Army
Copyright (c) Terry M. Hestilow, 2019
Captain (Retired) Terry M. Hestilow, United States Army, is a true “mustang” officer, whose military service spans two different periods of duty (active and reserve) as a non-commissioned officer and two different periods of duty (active and reserve) as a commissioned officer. His war service includes tours of duty in Vietnam and Afghanistan. An infantryman by military specialty, he left the Army during a period of relative peace in 1993 and pursued pastoral Christian ministry as a civilian until the nation fell under attack on September 11, 2001. Determined to return to duty and defend the nation once again, he overcame institutional obstacles and at the age of 51 returned to duty to participate in Operation Enduring Freedom as a civil affairs officer on Provincial Reconstruction Team, Farah, Afghanistan. When his tour was completed in 2008 he retired from military service at the age of 57. He is a graduate of the University of Texas at Arlington, studied at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, and studied at numerous professional Army schools including The United States Army Infantry School at Fort Benning, Georgia and The United States Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. As a civilian he served as pastor of churches in Colorado and Louisiana, and has worked as a denominational leader, organizational chaplain, charter president of the National Military Science Christian Student Ministry, and ministry conference leader for the Sunday School Board of the Southern Baptist Convention at Glorieta, New Mexico. In the absence of available military chaplains in Regional Command (West), International Security Assistance Force, Afghanistan, he performed additional duty at the commander’s request as the Religious Activities Director (de facto pastor, study leader, and ministry coordinator for visiting chaplains) for the chapel “Heaven’s Outpost” at Forward Operating Base, Farah, Afghanistan, from 2007-2008. His awards include: the Army Commendation Medal (3), the Army Achievement Medal (2), the Good Conduct Medal (two for enlisted service), the National Defense Service Medal (2), and the Republic of Vietnam Gallantry Cross with Palm. He is married to the former Rebecca Ann Ryan of Bedford, Texas, and they are the proud parents of three surviving adult children and two awesome grandsons. Captain Hestilow is a member of a number of professional military organizations including: American Legion, Post 379, Bedford, Texas, First Cavalry Division Association, Eighth Infantry Regiment Association, Military Officer’s Association of America, Officer’s Christian Fellowship, and Christian Military Fellowship.
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