We shall never forget that it was our submarines that held the lines against the enemy while our fleets replaced losses and repaired wounds.
I'm as interested in the families and communities that surround our soldiers.
I'm honored to donate my time as an ambassador for Blue Star Families, the largest nonprofit organization serving active duty service members and their families through chapters in the U.S.
Until the Yom Kippur War, in 1973, until then Israel didn't have a chance but to fight for her life. We were attacked five times, outgunned, outnumbered, on a small piece of land, and our main challenge was to remain alive.
Life does not stand still for families and local communities when our brave men and women are deployed, but we can make their time apart more bearable by recognizing their sacrifice and fulfilling our commitments to them.
I can say that American men and women in the Military are damn impressive.
You could be a Green Beret and a kid could jump out from behind a building and hit you with a rock. No matter how tough you become in the military, there's a way to die: there's nothing safe about it.
Men and women serving in the military deserve better than what they're giving - what we're giving them. They don't know what they're going to be doing tomorrow.
If you ask a soldier what is the key to this confidence, they will likely answer their discipline and their training.
We remember the grind of the insurgency -- the roadside bombs, the sniper fire, the suicide attacks. From the 'triangle of death' to the fight for Ramadi; from Mosul in the north to Basra in the south -- your will proved stronger than the terror of those who tried to break it.
As the wife of a retired Navy commander and the representative of the district covering Fairchild Air Force Base in Spokane, Washington, I see firsthand the permanent effects of war - both physical and psychological - on those who serve our country.
In Afghanistan and Iraq we would often get cowardly fire and rounds hitting us from the sides but we just hunker down and keep going, we don't turn the mission around.
It's very hard to feel the difficulties that the military goes through. It's very hard to feel the difficulties of military families, unless you're in that environment. And sometimes you have to force yourself to try and put yourself in other people's sort of shoes and environment to get the sense of that.
From my perspective, to really be ready, we can't afford to have these deep degradations in readiness associated with personnel turbulence post-deployment.
Keeping our military strong means keepin' our families strong.
So here's a question from one who believed, only a week ago, that Baghdad might just collapse and that we might wake up one morning to find the Baathist militia and the Iraqi army gone and the Americans walking down Saadun Street with their rifles over their shoulders. If the Iraqis can still hold out against such overwhelming force in Umm Qasr for four days, if they can keep fighting in Basra and Nasiriyah – the latter a city that briefly rose in revolt against Saddam's regime in 1991 – why should Saddam's forces not keep fighting in Baghdad?
Have fired 500 rounds at the Germans, at my command, been shelled, didn't run away thank the Lord and never lost a man. Probably shouldn't have told you but you'll not worry any more if you know I'm in it than if you think I am. Have had the most strenuous work of my life, am very tired but otherwise absolutely in good condition physically mentally and morally.
