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I was 17 when Jed and I joined up with Colonel Washington's boys just outside Philadelphia in the fall of 1777. We got our new uniforms and muskets and paraded around near the courthouse, much to the delight of the ladies. Then we all marched out and went into winter camp in Valley Forge. It was nothing but cold and wet. First Jed caught the cough, and then me. We both died without every hearing a British musket fired at us. I believe I died to help give birth to a new nation.

I was 18 when the Union sergeant came to our Indiana town in 1861 and said he was forming a regiment to fight the Rebs. We got our uniforms, all neat and blue, and were soon on a train on over to Pennsylvania to a place called Gettysburg. After three days of real rough fighting, I was hit by a minie ball and fell in a place called Cemetery Ridge. I believe I died to preserve my nation.

I was 22 when my New York National Guard unit was activated in 1917 just before the Germans sank the Lusitania. I was a senior at Columbia and looked forward to going to law school. However, I was a patriotic man, and proud to put on my first lieutenant's uniform. When the President declared war in April, my unit joined Regulars and National Guard from all over the US at Camp Yaphank to form the famous Rainbow Division. We trained for six months, then sailed for France. I was leading a patrol in the Rouge Bouquet when a German sniper killed me. I believe I died to make democracy strong in America and elsewhere in the world.

I was 19 when the Japs hit Pearl Harbor. I was so pee'd off that I was at the Navy recruiting office the next day and signed up. In a few weeks, I got my orders to Newport for boot camp, then to boatswain school in San Diego. In 1943 I was assigned to a troop transport, and my landing craft got hit as I was steering it to land Marines on Tarawa. Most of the Marines and I didn't make it. I believe I died because Japan attacked us and Hitler declared war on it, and those guys had to be stopped.

I was 38, a National Guard master sergeant serving my second active duty tour in Iraq in 2007. One morning in December, after a relatively quiet night in Baghdad, a bunch of us guys were handing out Christmas toys to some kids in the neighborhood. You know, I have three of my own at home, and it made me feel good, right up to the moment the booby trap on one of the kids went off right next to me. I believe I died because it was my duty to defend my country from terrorists who would kill kids in America, maybe my own.

Tell us, please. Did we all die in vain?

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