Passed away before life’s noon
Who shall say they died too soon?
Ye who mourn, oh, cease from tears
Deeds like these outlast the years.

Inscription on obelisk at Cemetery Ridge at Gettysburg, honoring Italian soldiers killed in battle on July 2, 1863.

Standing on the quiet shore of the San Diego, California harbor in the dreary early morning June mist, we anxiously watched as the gracefully aging aircraft carrier U.S.S. Constellation and its flotilla of gray American warships returned victoriously home from the Iraq War. What an honorable sight to behold as they approached waiting loves ones!

Escorted by powerful harbor tug boats shooting streams of sea water high into the sunless sky as heavily armed Navy security speedboats skimmed the gentle waves, orange and white U.S. Coast Guard helicopters hovered protectively overhead like mother hens watching over their chicks.

Every imaginable size and kind of small boat was alive in the channel – speedboats, sailboats, canoes, kayaks, yachts, commercial fishing boats. These were not military vessels but rather those of citizens like you and me, doing their small but important part in welcoming home some of America’s best. American flags were flying from every sail mast, and many were held in the outstretched arms of excited everyday people, all in a grateful expression of love of country.

This carrier group had been at sea ten months, far beyond the normal length of a typical naval deployment. For the venerable Constellation and her six accompanying war ships, this had not been a routine training mission but rather a time of intense warfare in a distant place of uncertainty. The Constellation had successfully launched over 3,000 combat sorties, a formidable undertaking for any aircraft carrier.

Today she returned home from her final journey as “America’s flagship”, a nickname given to the Constellation years earlier by President Ronald Reagan. Forty-one years after being commissioned, the U. S. S. Constellation, the Navy’s second oldest active warship, was now destined for mothballs.

At the time we were serving as full-time missionaries, and with our missionary friends we joined in the enthusiastic and tearful waving of a large American flag which normally flies gently atop the mission home. We exchanged silent but knowing glances with each other as we watched these floating gray instruments of American military might sail past, enormous American flags streaming majestically from their towering superstructures.

Those aboard these enormous vessels of war were men and women dedicated to peace. Tired, homesick, and battle-worn, they were deservedly and quietly proud of a job well done. Duty and honor and country had new meaning for the 6,000 professional and deliberate sailors and Marines aboard.

Dressed in crisp white uniforms rarely worn at sea, sailors numbering in the thousands manned the rails of each vessel. Standing erect with well-earned pride and the special camaraderie which comes only of wartime accomplishment, sailors with an understanding born of combat experience far beyond their youthful years restrained their jubilant spirits in yearning anticipation of waiting reunions with loved ones. In minutes they would stand on American soil for the first time in months. Many fathers would lovingly hold newborn infants in their battle-strengthened arms, children they had never before seen.

Beside us were two pretty young girls who with their elderly grandfather had traveled from their home in Arizona, sisters whose youthful exuberance and anxious spirits could hardly be contained as they longingly searched for a glimpse of their Navy father, one of those valiant sailors at the rail. Unspoken on their joyful faces was a glow of love.

They are today’s rising generation, and there is a changing of the guard as over 1,100 American World War II veterans pass away each day. They are the future, and it is for these two young sisters and others like them that their father and other fathers and brothers and mothers and sisters go selflessly to sea and to the skies and to war, knowing that duty may call them to give the last full measure.

Combat weary Marines stood silently on the bow of the U.S.S. Constellation’s sleek flight deck. They stood not alone as individuals but together as a group, so reflective of the Marine Corps code of unity which permeates everything an American Marine is and does. At the forward center of the flight deck stood one young Marine, nameless to us, not apart from the group but simply first in the line. We watched from our shoreline perch as he looked steadily forward toward land, a tiny American flag proudly held high in his hand – a treasured standard of liberty for which he had so selflessly offered his very life if necessary. He was obviously a man for whom duty and honor and country were far more than mere words of a memorized slogan.

Looking at these young shipboard Americans, our inclination to cheer their safe return home was quickly overtaken by our own personal feelings of gratitude for God and family and country, and for a country which allows my love of family and my free and unhindered worship of God. These sailors and Marines, each a serving citizen, had willingly gone into harm’s way to defend freedom and liberty, not to conquer but to vanquish, and with no thought of self.

For us this moment was not a time of idle words. Our only spoken expression to each other that day was “May God bless America, this land of liberty, and those who defend her.” Such is my grateful prayer today.

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