Podcast Transcript

29 May 2006
Transcript of Ambassador Robert Tuttle's Memorial Day Speech at the Cambridge American Military Cemetery

There is a particular kind of silence in places like this - the silence of the fallen. But I hear something else as well.

For more than a generation, people have been coming to this sacred ground to remember.

To honor these heroes and to speak of how they gave their lives and offered their sacrifice for the greater good.

Many times -- sometimes for years on end -- they were able to come here and remember our wars as past events. Whereas today, we also turn our thoughts to those men and women serving all over the world in far-flung places, away from their homes and families.

I think especially of those who will not return from those places. Many, like these soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines, will lie forever on a distant shore.

But I listen to the silence of these graves, and “giving” and “offering” is not what I hear.

That is what we say of them. But they did not come to die. These young people, so full of hope and living - they did not give their lives. Their lives were torn from them.

They fought with every breath to continue, to move forward, to fight until the job was done.

They fought for something so basic, so fundamental, that we often forget that their ultimate goal was to go home.

I think of these young people as they lay on some field or makeshift hospital, as they realized that they were not going home.

To me, this place, this sacred place, is not about their sacrifice and duty but is redolent with the purest kind of thought - thoughts of their wives and husbands, their families and children, perhaps their farms and their businesses - all the things they loved and wrought into being with that love.

That is what I hear in this silence. Thoughts of home. Maybe not even as it really was, but as they believed that their work and hopes and dreams could make it - when they got back.

That is what I think this day, this moment, and this place are about.

The best ideals. The highest vision. The noblest thoughts. Of home. The kind of home they believed in - and died for.

So to me, the quarrels of politicians are not for this place. The rights and wrongs, and plans and strategies, are not for this place. The loudest patriots are by definition among the living, and even their proclamations are not for this place.

This place is for the dreams and aspirations of the fallen. We are rightly stilled to silence in the presence of the thoughts of the young and strong and free who were trying to do what they believed was right -- to give others the freedom and opportunity to have the kind of life they so desperately wanted to return to.

Yes, they gave their lives, and, of course, they offered themselves as a sacrifice. But as they served, they held onto the image of the most powerful driver of all - home - the land they loved, its way of life, the values they held, but most of all, the people nearest and dearest to them.

Their thoughts have steeped this place with dreams. It is their living -- and their longing - that reaches out to us.

Today we remember them -- and those who had to carry on without them. But we remember their lives and unfulfilled dreams best by rededicating ourselves to their mission: to protect the land they loved enough to go halfway around the world to defend. And like those who lie here - those who will follow in their tragic footsteps.

It is in our remembering that we ensure that their fight and their death were not in vain.

By striving to make those ideals - the dreams of what we can be - and the vision of freedom that we serve - a reality in this world, we not only honor those who went before in that struggle, but leave a worthy legacy for those who, like us today, will come here, to this place, in years to come, to remember.

Ohio-born poet Dana Burnet captured this thought in his poem, “Who Dreams Shall Live”:

The dreamer dies, but never dies the dream,
Though death shall call the whirlwind to his aid,
Enlist men's passions, trick their hearts with hate,
Still shall the vision live! Say nevermore
That dreams are fragile things. What else endures
Of all this broken world save only dreams.

It has been my honor to be with you today.

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