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Hunker Down with Kes

Reflecting On Their Last Full Measure

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Dr. Joseph Warren died on Breed’s Hill June 17, 1775. He was 34 years old. He left four children he had been raising alone since his wife’s passing two years earlier. He graduated from Harvard, was well established in Boston and was the second President of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress, having succeeded John Hancock.   
 
Samuel and John Adams, Paul Revere and other revolutionary leaders came to him for advice. Even the British generals respected him and sought his counsel on the rising tumult in the New England colonies.
 
Dr. Joseph Warren, clearly, was a man with an unlimited future. 
 
He had been commissioned a major general just three days before his death. An office he declined to accept. He arrived on Bunker Hill on that fateful June day and asked where the fighting was going to be the fiercest. Before pointing him to Breed’s Hill, both General Israel Putman and Colonel William Prescott again offered Warren the leadership of the small group of farmers, merchants and candlestick makers there to defend their rights, their land, their sacred honor...
 
Let me tell you, Warren and his fellow patriots gave a good accounting of themselves on that hot afternoon! Twice they repelled attacks from the British Regulars, who at the time were considered the greatest fighting force in the world. With little, or no, ammunition left, they threw rocks at the third, and fatal, attack rushing up the hill...
 
I have often wondered what he thought in those final moments. Obviously, abandoning his post didn’t cross his mind.  
 
But I imagine his children did. He was fighting for them; and the rest of his fellow compatriots; and for a country that was not yet born; and for generations of Americans to follow.
 
Don’t think for a second that the mighty British Redcoats “took” Joseph Warren’s life. He laid it down willingly for a greater cause...
 
You would not recognize Harlon Block’s face if he was standing right before you. But you should be familiar with his backside.
 
Harlon was an “All South” football player for the Weslaco Texas High School Panthers in 1942. The following year he was allowed to graduate early, along with seven other teammates, so they could enlist in the U.S. Marine Corps.
 
On February 23, 1945, Corporal Block, Sergeant Mike Strank, PFC Franklin Sousley and PFC Ira Hayes were ordered up Mount Suribachi on a tiny Japanese island in the South Pacific to “put up” an American flag. The flag was meant to inspire the marines fighting to take the much needed air strips below.
 
Joe Rosenthal of the Associated Press took the iconic picture as these four men, with the help of a couple of nearby soldiers, stuck the makeshift iron pipe into the lava rock and “Raised the Flag on Iwo Jima.” Harlon Brock is the guy at the bottom of the pole with his rear end toward the camera.
 
The six flag raisers live on...in our memory. In reality, three of them died on Iwo Jima. Harlon Block was killed by mortar fire six days after the famous picture was taken. We don’t know his last thoughts, but we do know he willingly volunteered for the opportunity to defend this country “From the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli...”
 
He was 20 years old when he gave his last full measure. 
 
Staff Sergeant Clifford Sims’ Congressional Medal of Honor citation begins, “For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity in action at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty.” Sims, a once homeless youth from Port St. Joe, Florida, led his squad through a fierce firefight just outside of Hue, Viet Nam on February 21, 1968.
 
He had already saved several lives by his quick thinking and leadership skills when he heard the unmistakable sound of a concealed booby trap being triggered directly to his front. He yelled a warning to his men and unhesitatingly dove on the bomb, taking the full impact of the blast, and thereby protecting his fellow soldiers. Greater love has no man than he lay down his life...
 
The Medal of Honor was awarded posthumously...gosh, what a horrible sounding word.
 
Staff Sergeant Sims was 25 years old. He left a wife and a daughter.
 
Somehow it becomes a little more personal, a tad “closer to home” when you have a name, understand the story and realize the individual sacrifice that was made on our behalf. And surely it must dawn on us eventually that they all, EVERY SINGLE American that has laid down his life for this country from Lexington Green to Afghanistan, has such a story.
 
They all leave someone behind. They all give up their future. They all put this country ahead of their personal desires.
 
I spent this entire Memorial Weekend wondering with all my heart if we, as individuals and as a nation, are honoring them...just a fraction as much as they have honored us...
 
With Utmost Respect,
Kes