(no subject)
They came from Kansas. New York. Texas.
Some bribed people to pretend to be their guardians, lied about their age or just waited until they received orders in the mail.
They left high school sweethearts. Aged grandparents. Family farms.
The training was grueling. The troop ships, somehow worse. Months of waiting. Isolation, disease and dread. Time passed.
The final seconds of their life were a cacophony of pain and sound.
They don't get much. Flags from a grateful nation. Mowed lawns. Some plaques in a far-off land. A quarter million American graves and "tablets of the missing," in countries like France,the Philippines, Belgium and Tunisia.
We will never bring them home, and in a couple hours, we plan to close the 24 cemeteries overseen by the American Battle Monuments Commission.