sacrifice themselves on the basic principle that we should live free. while the cause is the same everyone has a different reason for serving. maybe they are following in their father s footsteps or felt a calling after the terrorists tore down the twin towers. for me it was a patriotic parade or a series of them in a small town. motherly day and fourth of july parades in a tiny town in southern minnesota where my parents grew up. the whole town lined up on the tree sign side of the main street waiting for the veterans to walk by and when they came older vets and younger vets, crowd clapped and saluted. the reverence that town had for the veterans made me say, wow, those men really did something special. something bigger than this town. something bigger than themselves. these men were willing to put on a uniform and face danger for me, a kid they never met. it was just a handful of veterans, from one town. but every town in america gave men like that. out of sheer patriotism
Paid back in spades. at that very crucial moment when you were missing and sasha was missing, there was a bit of fate involved. john kirby was sitting here in the pentagon booth with me and i turned to him and asked immediately for help from the defense secretary and they didn t hesitate knowing how good our military medicine is and how we needed to get you to landstoll. we weren t sure how we would because we were told the u.s. military could not go into ukraine and at that moment we didn t know where you were so that s when i thought who do i know who has done this kind of work or has a network of people who could help, and that s when i call sarah of the independence fund of save our allies. i had seen the incredible work that her team had done on the ground in afghanistan getting 12,000 afghans out during that very messy withdrawal and those private individuals just happened to be in poland ready to launch, but again it was an