It is Memorial Day weekend. One of the most moving stories I’ve ever heard took place on June 21, 2006, in the Nuristan Province of Afghanistan, Staff Sergeant Jared Monti’s sixteen-man patrol came under fire. One of his men was wounded and fell over a ridge into what the soldiers described as a “death zone.”
Despite an intense firefight, he tried three times to save the soldier. On his third try, Jared was killed. He was posthumously awarded America’s highest honor for heroism, the Medal of Honor.
Paul Monti started an organization in his son’s memory called Operation Flag for Vets, where volunteers plant tens of thousands of flags at Soldiers’ graves on Memorial Day.
Paul drives Jared’s pickup truck, the military decals still on it. He explained: “It’s got his DNA all over it. I love driving it because it reminds me of him, though I don’t need the truck to remind me of him. I think about him every hour of every day.”
A Nashville songwriter heard this story and turned it into a song that country singer Lee Brice recorded. “I Drive Your Truck” earned Song of the Year honors at the Country Music Awards.
Many years before this weekend, on August 27, 1776, General George Washington addressed his soldiers before the Battle of Long Island. This was the first major battle after America declared her independence.
General Washington stated: “The time is now near at hand which must probably determine whether Americans are to be freemen or slaves . . . The fate of unborn millions will now depend, under God, on the courage and conduct of this army. Our cruel and unrelenting enemy leaves us only the choice of brave resistance, or the most abject submission. We have, therefore, to resolve to conquer or die.”
You and I are now part of the “unborn millions” General Washington referred to, whose lives are indescribably different because of the Soldiers Who Died to purchase our freedom and those like Jared Monti who died to preserve it.
We always need to remember those who gave their all. “We don’t know them all, but we owe them all.” They are Mansions Of The Lord.
Vic Alvarado 