This past May, I visited the Normandy American Cemetery, and stood on the emerald green bluffs overlooking what is still called "Omaha Beach". For over six decades, the cold water of the English Channel has ebbed and flowed over the stretch of sand that once bore the weight of young American soldiers. Many of those courageous men never made it off the beach, and many more did not survive the bloody skirmishes and grueling battles in the weeks and months that laid ahead. Their buddies, the lucky ones, came home to a grateful nation, weary of war, but steeled by certain victory. Although those lucky ones had been forever changed by what they had seen and experienced, they simply wanted to move forward, like the nation that received them, with modesty and no regrets. They married, had children, went back to school on the G.I. Bill, and became the indispensable backbone of our communities, businesses, and government.

Recently, I met some of those indispensable men when over a hundred World War Two veterans from North Carolina visited Washington D.C. to be recognized at the national memorial built in their honor. Now in their eighties and nineties, they possess the grace and quiet reserve of men and women who have nothing left to prove to one another and to the nation that treasures their fleeting presence. Walking beside them with a steady arm or nudging their wheel chairs from behind were uniformed men and women of today's Armed Forces, many of them veterans of recent conflicts. The older veterans had come of age when every able bodied man and woman was expected to serve, when war demanded a mobilization the likes of which we may never see again. The younger ones of today's wars are all volunteers, representing and defending a diverse and often distracted nation of over three hundred million people.

For over six decades, the American people and our government have honored our solemn obligation to the Greatest Generation, but we have much work remaining to honor our compact with their sons and daughters and their grandsons and granddaughters who serve our nation in uniform today. This Veterans Day, we remind ourselves that the enduring fabric of this republic was protected by the men and women in the World War against fascism, preserved by those who served during the Cold War to stem communism, and it is kept strong and vibrant today by the deeds of a new generation confronting tyranny and terrorism.

This current generation knows the heartache of watching children wave goodbye for the third or fourth time in as many years, the frustration and anger of losing friends in an instant, and the painstaking, bittersweet taste of small victories that will never make the nightly news. They are coming back quietly to a grateful, but unfamiliar nation that many of them do not recognize. Their return home from war and the delicate and complex process of healing and returning to society is occurring at the same time this nation is distracted by economic anxiety.