Who more than self their country loved

And crown thy good with brotherhood

We all sing the lyrics to America the Beautiful with memorized verses but others live the lives we sing about.

Who more than self their country loved
by
Chaplain Kathie


The brotherhood they live is with the men and women they serve this nation with. They came from every part of this nation to join together as the defenders of this land. They serve to preserve our freedoms and rights. While they have been fighting on foreign shores for generations, they go where the nation sends them. Some may say, "I didn't want them to go." but circumstances and elected politicians, chosen by the majority, decided where they would go and for how long they would stay. This is why we as a nation must separate the politicians deciding from the men and women risking their lives because of their decisions.

Their brotherhood joins them together with others from cities, towns, political parties and faiths. They come together from broken homes and strong families, adopting each other as one of their own. This bond does not break. This bond is not forgotten. From the day they deploy into combat, they are no longer citizen thinking of themselves. They are warrior risking their lives for the sake of this nation and each other. When they return, they do not return to living among the rest of us as citizen once more. They return as veteran, the few among the many knowing what the price of our lives is. They retain it all in their soul.

America the Beautiful

Words by Katharine Lee Bates,
Melody by Samuel Ward


.......O beautiful for heroes proved
In liberating strife.
Who more than self their country loved
And mercy more than life!
America! America!
May God thy gold refine
Till all success be nobleness
And every gain divine!

O beautiful for patriot dream
That sees beyond the years
Thine alabaster cities gleam
Undimmed by human tears!
America! America!
God shed his grace on thee
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!

Who more than self their country loved

They carry the burdens we will never know embedded in their soul and we move on. We see them march in parades as the years go by, yet once they are home, we feel our duty is done. Yet longing to return to our selfish lives we push memories of their sacrifices away until the next Memorial Day when we once again hang the flag from our homes and decorate the grave markers of our own family members. On Veterans Day, we may skip shopping and actually go to see them march down the street never once thinking that they are veterans every day of their lives.

We don't think of their wounds. We don't think of the memories they have to hold. We don't think of the nights they are haunted by dreams or the days when flashbacks take them back to danger. We don't think of how they grieve over the loss of brothers they shared their lives with no more than we think of the strangers they were sent to fight and defeat.

July 4th we watch the fireworks and stuff ourselves at cookouts. We feel oh so patriotic on a few days a year, but they know what it is like to have paid the price as patriots believing in this nation enough to be willing to lay down their lives for her.

No matter what they returned to, they would still find this nation worthy of doing it again. When asked, Vietnam veterans held this nation in that great of esteem, even after they were subjected to terrible treatment and betrayed, that they would still go back, still held onto their sense of pride they were among the few to know the price of freedom. They reached beyond themselves even then and made sure they would take care of each other as well as taking on the extra burden of other generations of veterans so that none of them would feel the sting of a national anger being taken out on the warriors sent or the ambivalence toward the wounded in need of care.

Today veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan carry on that brotherhood, that bond forged by service to this nation and they take care of each other. The rest of us move on, worry about what our own problems, become obsessed with the latest celebrity gossip and take political positions where we regard the other side as less patriotic without ever thinking that the men and women sent to fight our battles came from every political party, walk of life, faith and belief we now feel we have the right to treat with disgust. Oh, how we have managed to once again let politics remove us from gratitude.

Let the disagreements go on since they fought to defend that right to disagree. Let there be differences debated since our differences have as much to do with our strength as what binds us together. Let there be voices heard from different views. What we must stop is the slander and lies, the anger and hatred, the personal attacks against one party from another and begin to work with the knowledge the price of our right to speak freely has been paid from by the men and women serving together and risking their lives together first and foremost in their souls.

Let there be no veteran spending his/her days in need of help to survive with their wounds or neglected from our care. Let there never be one veteran left to regret they survived to the point where it becomes more acceptable to take their own lives than to live one more day in pain.

Let us never again send them into combat without preparing ahead of time to care for the wounded and the widows and let us never again allow any veteran we sent to wait for care that should have been waiting for them. "Crown they good" and let them know this nation is not going to forget the price they paid for the rest of us.