This Memorial Day weekend, look closely at these faces.
They are barely men. Most of the boys who flew our heavy bombers over Europe were in their late teens and early twenties. The average age of a B-17 crew was under 25. Many of the gunners were teenagers who climbed into those planes before they were old enough to vote or buy a drink.
And their odds were brutal. The Eighth Air Force lost between 26,000 and 28,000 of these young men, roughly one in ten of every American killed in the entire war. In 1943, the math was so cruel that finishing a full tour of missions was nearly impossible.
They knew the risk. They went anyway.
These boys never got to come home to a wife. They never got to hold a child. They never got to teach a son to throw a ball or walk a daughter down the aisle. Everything they might have been, every birthday and Christmas and quiet ordinary evening, they traded so that we could have ours.
That is the cost behind the word freedom. It was never free, and it was never cheap.
We live in a divided country right now. We argue, we shout past each other, we wonder some days what still holds us together. But the men in this picture did not die for a political party. They died for the idea our Founders staked everything on, that a free people governing themselves is worth any price.
The same principles that built this Republic are the ones these boys defended with their lives. Limited government. Personal liberty. A nation where the people, not the powerful, hold the reins.
So this weekend, before the cookouts and the sales, pause and remember them.
To all the boys who never got to be fathers, we owe you everything.
We will not forget.
Shared by the Federalist Papers
"Stop. This is not Iraq, this is not endless. I was there for both. Our generation knows better, and so does this president! He called the last 20 years of nation-building wars dumb. And he's right."
"This is the opposite. This operation is a clear devastating decisive mission. Destroy the missile threat, destroy the navy, NO NUKES."
Boom.
Episode 6 of the Lantern Podcast.
Rachel Atwood is a stay at home mom from Grand Rapids, MI who works on the side for Premier Jewelry.
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