Last night I heard the Waco Symphony Orchestra play a fine concert of the music of renowned film composer John Williams. It hit all the high points: Raiders of the Lost Ark, Jaws, Star Wars, and what I consider to be Williams’ best cinematic composition, the main theme from 1978’s Superman. Also on the playlist was a piece Williams composed for Saving Private Ryan entitled “Hymn to the Fallen,” during the performance of which photographs of US military cemeteries around the world and the numbers buried at each were projected on the two screens at the sides of the stage. More than one person came up to me during the intermission and remarked how moving it had been. “I wiped away a tear,” a man admitted.
It did indeed provide an emotional punch, seeing all those the places from Belgium to North Africa to the Philippines, where thousands upon thousands of US servicemen and women now rest having given their lives in the cause of a freer world. It reminded me of something former Secretary of State and former Chairman of the JCS Colin Powell said during a visit to Switzerland in 2003…
We have gone forth from our shores repeatedly over the last hundred years and we’ve done this as recently as the last year in Afghanistan and put wonderful young men and women at risk, many of whom have lost their lives, and we have asked for nothing except enough ground to bury them in, and otherwise we have returned home to seek our own, you know, to seek our own lives in peace, to live our own lives in peace. But there comes a time when soft power or talking with evil will not work where, unfortunately, hard power is the only thing that works.
These beautiful, peaceful places that overlook the beaches of Sicily or the verdant fields of eastern France are reminders to us that sometimes military force is the only thing that will restore freedom. Sometimes “boots on the ground,” as the saying goes, is the only force that can defeat evil. And all of our overseas cemeteries are silent witnesses to how exceptional America indeed is, as so many thousands of our honored dead lie so far from home.
Meuse-Argonne American Cemetery and Memorial