I turned seventy-one on Wednesday, and I have been thankful for every day I have been given since 8 April 1972.
During the period of 4-8 April that year, death did not appear merely imminent but absolutely assured.
No person on the battlefield was more surprised that I was actually still alive on that morning south of Loc Ninh, Vietnam, than I was.
To this day and wherever or whenever the battle has been joined, I always fight with what has been described by others as “total abandon.”
I never have been exactly sure what that means.
Whatever, it probably started in my youth with my inability to walk away from a fight regardless of who the opponent or opponents were.
I don’t say this in bragging but merely to point out I never knew another way to approach life in general or fighting in particular.
I have the scars to prove I certainly did not win them all.
I have spent my life viewing myself as a fortunate son simply by having been born in the United States of America.
I have seen the rest of the world up close and personal.
I know that I have truly been blessed to have been born and raised in freedom.
Somehow I got it into my head that our Maker did not intend less for anyone in this world than what I have, free of charge to me, enjoyed since birth.
Especially since my time in a communist prison, I came to believe I have some responsibility to try and shine that light of freedom on others.
I see in too many other Americans a compartmentalized version of this thought where they select groups who should be free while disregarding all others as not worth the price in blood or somehow predesignated as not really able to handle freedom.
This is the argument that allows us to make exceptions based on everything from a need for allies to a need for something the dictator may have or to simply quit and walk away from the fight.
It makes no difference if the dictator is an individual on the right or the asinine communist theory of dictatorship by the proletariat on the left.
It is without freedom and thus wrong no matter how convenient to our foreign policy of the moment.
(To be continued)
Maj. Mark A. Smith, USA, Retired, may be contacted at