Posted By:
Catherine Moy
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Good Morning patriots!! Move America Forward has set off for our cross-country tour to celebrate America’s heroes at the holidays. This morning we will hold a solemn ceremony at the San Joaquin Korean Veterans Memorial, then move on to San Jose and make a stop at Rep. Ellen Tauscher’s Walnut Creek office to drop off a stocking loaded with coal.

We will stop at 40 sites across the nation. (See our itinerary at Move America Forward)

We need you all to come out and bring holidays cards - Christmas and Hanukkah - that we will take all the way to Iraq at Christmas.  While most of us are at home with our families, our troops are thousands of miles away protecting our freedoms. This sounds so cliche, but the facts are the facts. Some have given their lives for us.

Every day they work for peace in the Middle East, a place that has for thousands of years warred. We in America have been drawn into the war by hatemongering Muslim jihadists. Our men and women in uniform are on the front lines. They deserve a simple note of thanks - and more.

Here at Move America Forward, school children have been sending cards to us so we can get them to our soldiers. They have simple messages that say so much. “Thank You. We Love You.”

Check our itinerary. Come out to our gatherings. Make cards for our troops. Let’s show them how much we love them. Let’s tell them “thank you.”

The following poem has been around the Internet a few times. But it is fitting as we start our cross-country tour. I don’t know who authored it, but it is very good.

A Soldier’s Night Before Christmas

The embers glowed softly, and in their dim light,
I gazed round the room and I cherished the sight.
My wife was asleep, her head on my chest,
My daughter beside me, angelic in rest.
Outside the snow fell, a blanket of white,
Transforming the yard to a winter delight.
The sparkling lights in the tree I believe,
Completed the magic that was Christmas Eve.
My eyelids were heavy, my breathing was deep,
Secure and surrounded by love I would sleep.
In perfect contentment, or so it would seem,

So I slumbered, perhaps I started to dream.
The sound wasn’t loud, and it wasn’t too near,
But I opened my eyes when it tickled my ear.
Perhaps just a cough, I didn’t quite know,
Then the sure sound of footsteps outside in the snow.
My soul gave a tremble, I struggled to hear,
And I crept to the door just to see who was near.
Standing out in the cold and the dark of the night,
A lone figure stood, his face weary and tight.
A soldier, I puzzled, some twenty years old,
Perhaps a Marine, huddled here in the cold.
Alone in the dark, he looked up and smiled,
Standing watch over me, and my wife and my child.
“What are you doing?” I asked without fear,
“Come in this moment, it’s freezing out here!
Put down your pack, brush the snow from your sleeve,
You should be at home on a cold Christmas Eve!”

For barely a moment I saw his eyes shift,
Away from the cold and the snow blown in drifts..
To the window that danced with a warm fire’s light
Then he sighed and he said “Its really all right,
I’m out here by choice. I’m here every night.”
“It’s my duty to stand at the front of the line,
That separates you from the darkest of times.
No one had to ask or beg or implore me,
I’m proud to stand here like my fathers before me.
My Gramps died at ‘ Pearl on a day in December,”
Then he sighed, “That’s a Christmas ‘Gram always remembers.”
My dad stood his watch in the jungles of ‘ Nam ‘,
And now it is my turn and so, here I am.
I’ve not seen my own son in more than a while,
But my wife sends me pictures, he’s sure got her smile.

Then he bent and he carefully pulled from his bag,
The red, white, and blue...an American flag.
I can live through the cold and the being alone,
Away from my family, my house and my home.
I can stand at my post through the rain and the sleet,
I can sleep in a foxhole with little to eat.
I can carry the weight of killing another,
Or lay down my life with my sister and brother..
Who stand at the front against any and all,
To ensure for all time that this flag will not fall.”

“So go back inside,” he said, “harbor no fright,
Your family is waiting and I’ll be all right.”
“But isn’t there something I can do, at the least,
“Give you money,” I asked, “or prepare you a feast?
It seems all too little for all that you’ve done,
For being away from your wife and your son.”

Then his eye welled a tear that held no regret,
“Just tell us you love us, and never forget.
To fight for our rights back at home while we’re gone,
To stand your own watch, no matter how long.
For when we come home, either standing or dead,
To know you remember we fought and we bled.
Is payment enough, and with that we will trust,
That we mattered to you as you mattered to us.”