Won't you Please Remember Them?

Some were boys that were still in school,
Some were from the farms that bailed the hay.
All truly believed in the Golden Rule.
Not one of them is here today.

Parents and brothers, sisters and wives
Hope and watch, and kneel to pray,
That their loved ones will return some day.
Oh won't you please remember them!

Some were single, some with wedding bands.
They came from across this beautiful land.
They seved our country true and well.
Now they live, or died in a foreign hell.

Fighting soldiers from the skies.
Fearless men who jumped and died.
Men who ment just what they said.
Now some are POWs, and some are dead.

From Concord Bridge to the Alamo
they never faltered or failed to go.
Still today their traditions stand.
They deserve to be back in their homeland.

Have you forgotten their sacrifice?
Would you go and pay their price?
Could you live your life in a bamboo pen?
Oh won't you please remember them?

Are we to throw away their sacrifice?
Will you let this country become what they died to prevent?

Would you stand up and be counted?
Would you defend theis country today, from domestic enemies as well as foreign?

"You've probably seen the bumper sticker somewhere along the road. It depicts an American Flag, accompanied by the words "These Colors Don't Run". I'm always glad to see this, because it reminds me of an incident from my confinement in North Vietnam at the Hao Lo POW camp, or the "Hanoi Hilton," as it became known.

"Then a Major in the US Air Force, I had been captured and imprisoned from 1967 - 1973. Our treatment had been frequently brutal. After three years, however, the beatings and torture became less frequent.

"During the last year, we were allowed outside most days for a couple of minutes to bathe. We showered by drawing water from a concrete tank with a home made bucket. One day as we stood by the tank, stripped of our clothes, a young Naval pilot named Mike Christian found the remnants of a handkerchief in a gutter that ran under the prison wall. Mike managed to sneak the grimy rag into our cell and began fashioning it into a flag. Over time we all loaned him a little soap, and he spent days cleaning the material. We helped by scrounging and stealing bits and pieces of anything he could use.

"At night, under his mosquito net, Mike worked on the flag. He made red and blue from ground-up roof tiles and tiny amounts of ink and painted the colors onto the cloth with watery rice glue. Using thread from his own blanket and a home made bamboo needle, he sewed on the stars.

"Early in the morning a few days later, when the guards were not alert, he whispered loudly from the back of our cell, 'Hey gang, look here". He proudly held up this tattered piece fo cloth, waving it as if in a breeze.

"If you used your imagination, you could tell it was supposed to be a flag. When he raised that smudgy fabric, we automatically stood straight and saluted, our chests puffing out, and more than a few had tears.

"About once a week the guards would strip us, run us outside and go through our clothing. During one of those shakedowns, they found Mike's flag. We all knew what would happen.

"That night they came for him. Night interrogations were always the worst. We could hear the beginning of the torture before they even had him in the torture cell. They pushed what was left of him back through the cell door. He was badly broken. Even his voice was gone.

"Within two weeks, dispite the danger, Mike scrounged another piece of cloth and began another flag. The stars and Stripes, our national symbol, was worth the sacrifice to him. Now whenever I see the flag, I think of Mike and the morning he first waved that tattered emblem of a nation. It was then, thousands of miles from home in a lonely prison cell, that he showed us what it is to be truly free".
--Condensed from a speech by Maj. Leo K. Thorsness, recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor.

Thanks, Debby P. for the quote. (See links page.)