Honor. Family. Freedom.

Well, I got back to the OP. We had an intel of an attack at 4pm, so I sat and scanned, the time passed, nothing happened, so I stood down after 430pm. At about 445pm we got hit. I thought only in the movies when you got blown up by a mortar did you fly through the air.

It feels like a lifetime since I sat in the comfort of my home and read the words on the screen, emails transmitted across the globe that were but a glimpse into the truth of a daily existence that few of us could fathom. He was worlds away fighting for the rights and freedoms of people he did not know. In those simple missives we understood what the world was watching as it unfolded on the television in broad, impersonal detail. And until that fateful summer, the world didn’t care that they were there.

We were told that after they counted it up, we have more tics (troops in contacts, means a firefight basically) than any other company since WWII (according to the numbers anyway) and more casualties and wounded than any company since the beginning of Vietnam.

And yet, somehow, he made it home.

Battle hardened and weary, he returned against the odds. While I ignored the folded flag and sank beneath its surface, I watched as he embraced life. With every step he took toward the future, I remembered my own steps and where they had led me.

He was destined for the life that he has chosen, a path filled with love of family and conviction and honor and strength in the face of fear. Of us all, he is the one that shows us that grandiose gestures pale in the shadow of simple touches and remembrances. He is the little boy I remember at Christmas and the man who stood beside me in my winter. He has stood for rights and freedoms that fill his soul but that are not his birthright. His friendships are enduring and forged with brothers by choice, those lost tattooed on his heart.

On this Memorial Day, he is thousands of miles from home, wearing hundreds of pounds of tactical gear and armor in unbearable heat as we curse the freeway standstill in our air-conditioned cars. He sleeps uneasily with a loaded gun, while his fiancé sleeps beside his empty spot and waits for him to return to say that he will, now and forever more. Today, while BBQs simmer and the flag waves merrily in the sun, he will eat, if he can, under its shadow.

On this Memorial Day he is standing for the freedoms and liberties we hold dear.

He is standing for them because he is among the Chosen few who do.