The Voice From the Tomb

Wayne D. Leeper

   A week in our nation’s capitol can have a profound effect on a person.  It is impossible not to be awed by the splendor of that beautiful city.  As one walks among the monuments to our great founders and leaders one cannot help but have a sense of pride in all that this has meant to the freedom of the Western world.

   From the Lincoln Memorial inscribed with the Gettysburg Address one can look across the mall and see the towering spire of the Washington Monument.  From the Washington Monument  can be viewed both the Lincoln Memorial and the Jefferson Memorial.  The city on the Potomac contains our magnificent Capitol Building with its impressive dome, the Supreme Court Building, the heart of American justice, and the White  House, home of our President; each symbolizing one  of the three divisions of our national government. Just across the Potomac stands the Pentagon, the seat and symbol of America’s military might.

   On all the monuments and memorials are inscriptions which touch us at the very core of our existence.  One cannot help but feel great pride as, standing before these tributes to greatness, a person is able to read the many quotations and inscriptions engraved in the granite from which they are made.  And in each of these places one can hear a myriad of voices pointing to and discussing the various tributes that we have erected to commemorate our heroic past.  Among all of these, however, there is only one that is more than just a mass of cold stone.

   Across the Potomac,  high on a hill overlooking the city stands a monument surrounded by silence.  The only sound heard by the two or three hundred visitors there at any given time is the sound of footsteps.  The guard takes twenty-one steps then turns to face the tomb for 21 seconds;  then turns to face back down the mat; changes his weapon to the outside shoulder, then twenty-one steps back down the mat. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here Rests

In Honored Glory

An American Soldier

Known But To God

 

  No one speaks as they stand on this hallowed ground.  But upon leaving it no one ever forgets the voice of silence that comes forth from deep within the heart of the monument.  The voice that  comes so distinctly from the tomb ask a simple question that should give each of us pause to stop and ponder the present state of our nation’s morality.  His unspoken question strikes at the very heart of our national existence:

 

“Are we, as a  nation, still deserving of the

price I paid for our freedom?”

 

Did he die leaving his own children fatherless that the women of America

 might have the right to kill forty-three million of their own unborn babies?

Did he die that children in the schools of America might be denied the right

to recognize the God to whom he addressed his dying prayer?

Did he die that the name of God might be removed from the pledge to the flag

for which he gave his live?

Did he die that the nation he served with honor might discard as it’s  national

motto, “In God we Trust?

Did he die that drugs might me made legally available and sexual promiscuity

might become the accepted norm for the youth of America for whom he fought?

Did he die that the joys of fatherhood he would never know cease to be desired

by men who would father then desert their own children?

Did he die that activist judges might discard the basic principals of the Constitution

and Declaration of Independence which he fought to defend? 

Did he die on foreign fields that every form of sexual  perversion known to man

might be practiced openly, glorified, and protected by the government that had

sent  him forth to defend our national heritage and our national honor?

Did he die that the “Ten Commandments” which had molded his life might be

banned from all public places?

Did he die never to see his wife or sweetheart again in order that  marriage

might be redefined to include any and every form of sexual perversion?

Did he die that the school children of America might be gunned down in school

by sick minds molded by the glorified violence put forth by video games and by Hollywood?

Did he die that those who, in the name of “political debate,” oppose everything

he fought and died for might vocally claim for themselves the same mantle of

patriotism which he wears in silence?

Did he die that those who “blame America first” should have the right to endanger

the lives of his comrades by words and deeds that encourage, aide, and comfort the enemy that took his life?

Did he die that politicians, might serve a  few months, then come home to exploit

their “Heroic Military Service” and a few medals as proof of their patriotism and

to gain political advantage in their quest for power in the nation for which he had

given his all?

 

  From his silent tomb he speaks loudly and clearly to the nation he loved.  Only God knows my name but I am one of you.  I am a farm boy from Iowa; I am a kid from the Bronx; my color matters not in battle, only my deeds. Yes, I am the kid from down the street.  I mowed your lawns, weeded your flowerbeds and in some cases dated your daughters.  I am someone’s son who left home to serve in a cause I did not fully understand and to answer a call of duty I could not resist.  I am an American soldier.  I never disparaged the friends I served with nor accused them of horrendous crimes during battle.  All we had were each other and our greatest task was trying to keep each other alive.  We fought in the Aragon Forest, the shores of Normandy and the snows of Korea.  The real “heroes” were our comrades who fell in the line of duty.  Today their deeds rest with their bodies under small white crosses in France or in unmarked graves in the jungles of Vietnam.

   As you leave this hallowed ground, my only request is that when you think of me you will also think of all the things which have combined to make our nation great.  Not that I did anything in and of myself, but what we have accomplished as a nation has been unequaled in the annuals of mankind.  We became great as a nation by being good. We were good because of the reverence we held for the God who has blessed and watched over us since the signing of our Declaration of Independence.

   May each of you strive to make this a nation wherein dwells righteousness and one that is worthy of the price my comrades and I paid.  There is no way you can honor those of us who have given our lives without honoring the God whom we revered.  For us the bugles are silent and the sounds of battle are no more, but those going forth to protect our nation today still need your prayers and your support,  just as we did.  From our President to the private in the field, you cannot honor us without honoring them; our Commander in Chief and all those who serve under him.  I died that America might live and be that great “Beacon of Freedom” for all mankind.  Will you now live to prove to the world that my life was not given in vain?

   May God bless America, the land that I loved.