One Veteran

One veteran carried three wounded Marines, one at a time and under heavy fire, to safety after being caught in a Vietnamese ambush, only to collapse from exhaustion. He regained consciousness inside a body bag because the corpsmen thought he was dead.

One veteran fought to get to a trapped soldier inside BOQ 3 in Saigon, along with 14 other military policemen, during TET; only one other of his rescue group survived. Once inside the building, he watched as a Communist B-40 rocket exploded in the doorway, vaporizing one man and wounding everyone else inside, including himself.

One veteran charged ashore during the D-Day invasion at Normandy, under intense German machine gun fire, on June 6, 1944.

One veteran was captured, along with most of his company, behind German lines and held in the infamous Stalag XI B, a brutal prisoner-of-war camp, until being liberated 4 months later by a British armored column.

One veteran survived being shot down while piloting helicopters on five different occasions.

One veteran survived despite being so badly wounded by mortar fragments that corpsmen loaded him aboard a chopper that was carrying out dead soldiers.

One veteran survived aboard ship despite five Japanese kamikaze attacks in the South Pacific.

One veteran, as he exited a bunker while under attack by North Korean artillery fire, was wounded in the legs. His rifle was blown in half.

One veteran survived a mortar round explosion that blew him into the air, peppering both arms and legs with shards of metal; his life was spared because the flak jacket he'd been given just days before absorbed fragmented pieces that would have killed him.

One veteran, whose job was to remove wounded soldiers from battlefields, was wounded by a mortar round while carrying a badly injured soldier to safety. His unit suffered 50% casualties in Italy.

One veteran survived being wounded by grenade shrapnel from a Communist booby-trap that another Marine had triggered. He then was shot twice.

One veteran survived an exploding North Vietnamese rocket, taking a jagged steel fragment in his back. It killed the medic behind him.

One veteran took out a North Korean tank that had overrun their position with a bazooka.

One veteran left high school his senior year to enlist in the Navy; as his destroyer was under Japanese kamikaze attack in the Pacific, he shot one of the planes out of the sky with the 20-millimeter antiaircraft gun he manned.

That veteran, who never received his high school diploma, will be presented with it tomorrow at his alma mater in front of the current student body.

And I'll have the honor and privilege of introducing him.

THANK YOU, VETERANS!