Ultimately, my saving grace was surrendering to the courage of my brothers in arms, many with painful disfiguring injuries who, in spite of what they saw as widespread public sentiment against them by their own fellow citizens, were for the most part happy to be home. I admit that I was truly relieved when that temporary duty assignment was over; as I later learned, it was only over in time, but not really over.

I came back to the U.S. in 1972 and I was discharged from the First Marine Division at Camp Pendleton, California. I started college in San Diego using the G.I. Bill and it wasn’t long before I was living a normal life in pursuit of an education. I didn’t try to keep in touch with any of the Marines from my old units, I didn’t join any Veterans’ Organizations, and I didn’t dwell on or talk about my military experience; I thought I had pretty much put the past behind me.

By chance one day on a drive, I ended up at Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery in San Diego. They were placing flags on thousands of Veterans’ graves for Memorial Day and I stopped to help. That day, I realized that I hadn’t left as much behind as I thought, and that I did have a lot to say about the courage of those troops in those graves. To this day, placing a flag on Veteran’s grave is a very emotional experience for me, but an experience that I am willing to share with others if they will join me.

As a Veteran, and the Director of Flags4Vets, it is my job to remind people and companies that placing an “I support the troops” bumper sticker on their car and hanging U.S. Flags on and in your building is simply not enough. Every year when Flags4Vets struggles to raise money and find volunteers to place flags on Veterans’ graves, I wonder why all of those people who “support the troops” don’t have a few minutes to spare to help place flags on graves; we all know that people pretty much accomplish what they set their mind to; priorities.

Over the last 235 years, 1.5 Million of our Sons and Daughters have been killed in the line of duty while protecting your way of life, your liberties, and your freedoms. You and your family and your company can help Flags4Vets honor their service.

Flags4Vets requests a donation from you to buy flags for Veterans’ graves and a few hours of your time to help place those flags to honor our Fallen Heroes. This year we need 35,000 U.S. Government specification grave flags to place in the Louisville area for Memorial Day and Veterans Day 2010. $1,000 will buy 1,000 flags for graves.

As the following documents do attest, we are a certified non-profit 501(c)(3) and we are the only organization approved by the Department of Defense, National Cemetery Administration, to raise money for flags and to place them on Veterans’ graves in the U.S. and ten other countries. If you visit our website at www.theUSflag.com you can take a look at the kinds of things that we do.

Fred Moore

 

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