As a journalist, I’ve been very fortunate to cover a lot of major events and interview a lot of important people.
But the most interesting interviews I’ve conducted haven’t come with presidential candidates or governors or titans of industry. The best interviews have always been with men and women who have served this country in the military.
In 1998, I was working at The Macon Telegraph. The movie “Saving Private Ryan,” which was set at the time of D-Day, was about to come out, and my editors and I thought it was make a great story to find some D-Day veterans, take them to see the movie and then talk with them about the movie and their personal experiences.
We found six veterans – two who had been on the beach during the initial assault, three who were there a few days later and one who flew air support over the invasion. During the intense opening scene, the veteran sitting next to me reached out and grabbed my hand. I looked up and saw tears in his eyes.
“This is exactly what that morning was like,” he said.
After the movie and over several pitchers of beer, I laughed as the men joked about their exploits. (The ground fighters teased the pilot endless about “his sacrifice” in his air-conditioned plane over the invasion.) And I was moved to tears as they talked so eloquently about their experiences in battle.
Not long after this experience, I was given a tougher assignment. I had to cover the funeral of young soldier killed during a battle in Afghanistan. The funeral was held at a tiny church in the middle of nowhere between Macon and Columbus.
I was the only white person in the church, but I was made to feel welcome. And when people found out I was a reporter, so many of them wanted to tell me the story of the young hero – of his desire from an early age to serve his country, of the celebration they had for him at that tiny church when he complete basic training, of the worry they had when he was deployed overseas.
I’ve been thinking a lot this week about those D-Day veterans and all the other veterans who have so ably fought for our country. And of that young man and the many, many others who gave the ultimate sacrifice to defend our freedoms.
A young man from Early County, where I’m from in Southwest Georgia, was killed over the weekend in Iraq. First Lt. Weston Lee died from wounds he sustained when an improvised explosive device detonated during a patrol outside Mosul.
Lee was an infantry officer assigned to 1st Battalion, 325th Infantry Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division, at Fort Bragg, N.C.
I didn’t know Lt. Lee personally. But some friends of mine did. And they left no doubt that he loved his family, he loved his Lord and his loved his country.
We have a tendency in this country to get lost in our own little worlds, to take our freedoms for granted. We can say whatever we want and we can pray however we want. But we forget the sacrifices that our military men and women are making to ensure those freedoms remain. Only when Veterans Day rolls around – or a tragedy like Lt. Lee’s death hits so close to home – to we pay proper homage to their service.
We need to change that. Lt. Lee and all the others deserve it.
