In-town pool note #5 - amphitheater + speech exceprts

Pool sat down in the amphitheater at 11.32am.

We are awaiting POTUS’s speech with a rendition of the Battle Hymn of the Republic from a Marine Corps band.

The White House passes on these excerpts from POTUS’s imminent speech:

These warriors picked up the mantle of duty and service, knowing that to live for others meant always that they might die for others.

They asked nothing. They gave everything. And we owe them everything and more.

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For the families of the fallen, you feel the absence of your heroes every day—in the familiar laugh no longer heard, the empty space at Sunday dinner, or the want of a hug or a pat on the back that will never come again.

Every Gold Star Family fights a battle long after the victory is won—and today, we lift you up and we hold you high.

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In every generation since, at Trenton and Yorktown, at Vicksburg and Shiloh—and in faraway places with names like Château-Thierry, Anzio, Iwo Jima, Khe Sanh, and Kandahar—a chosen few have given all on the altar of freedom.

They plunged into the crucible of battle, stormed into the fires of hell, charged into the valley of death, and rose into the arms of angels.

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The sacrifice that they made was not merely for a single battle, a long-ago victory, or a fleeting triumph decades or centuries past. Their sacrifice was for today, tomorrow, and every morning after. Every child that lives in peace, every home that is filled with joy and love, every day the Republic stands, is only possible because of those who did what had to be done when duty called and the cost was everything.

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Our debt to them is eternal—and it does not diminish with time, it only grows and grows with each passing year. The greatest monument to their courage is not carved in marble or cast in bronze—it is all around us, an American nation 300 million strong, which will soon be greater than ever before.

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Great poets have written that it is love which moves the sun and the stars. But here on this sacred soil, we are reminded that it is love which moves the course of history—and moves it always toward Freedom.

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From Bunker Hill to Bastogne and Cantigny to the Coral Sea, from Gettysburg to Guadalcanal and Concord to Kabul, America’s best and America’s bravest have fought, bled, and died so that we could pick up the torch of liberty, raise it high, and carry it onward to places they could never have dreamed.

--

Steff Chávez

Washington Reporter

Financial Times

1667 K Street NW

Suite 825

Washington, DC 20006

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