Memorial Day – 3pm – Set your clocks

You! Yeah you!

Put down the burger and beer for a minute. I wanna talk to you.

While you spend the weekend frolicking under that flag with the kids and combating mosquitoes and loud music from the next campsite over…

I want you to think about a different kind of “combat”.

It’s the one that made your weekend possible in the first place.

Lt Colonel Allen West (US Army) said it best, so I’m just gonna use his words. I could do my usual and butcher my intent and force you to suffer through it, but he nailed it;

“The United States of America possesses the greatest military force the world has ever known. Our Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines and Coast Guardsman volunteer to protect and defend this country and all its citizens, and do so with honor, integrity and excellence. Our nation continually asks them to do more and more, with less and less.

We must never forget why we have, and why we need our military. Our armed forces exist solely to ensure our nation is safe, so that each and every one of us can sleep soundly at night, knowing we have “guardians at the gate.”

Those who serve today deserve our gratitude, those who are returning from the battlefield deserve our open arms, and those who will never return deserve our thoughts, tributes and remembrance.

In 2000, President Bill Clinton passed a resolution asking all Americans to observe a “National Moment of Remembrance” at 3:00 p.m. on each Memorial Day “to remember and reflect on the sacrifices made by so many to provide freedom for all.”

Like many others, I know what I will be doing at 3:00 p.m. this Memorial Day.

I know that I will not be alone.

For as General Logan once proclaimed, “Let no vandalism of avarice or neglect, no ravages of time testify to the present or to the coming generations that we have forgotten as a people the cost of a free and undivided republic.”

So at 3:00pm today, put down the brew and beef and shut the hell up for a moment.

This day is about those who have always known that there is no sale price for freedom. It is about those who were more than willing to discount their own lives for the ultimate benefit to others.

Those who fell gave you this weekend. Just so you don’t forget it…

AK