In the summer of 1972, I was drafted during the Vietnam War. Despite my personal reservations about serving my country in this conflict, which by then had become a quagmire, and had turned overwhelming unpopularity among my contemporaries, and the American public, I reported and served for the next two years.

Like many, I was propagandized and convinced that our democracy was being seriously challenged by the Communists and that the proposition of the “Domino Theory” might be real. I was 19 years old, naive and scared.

But I was very fortunate, in a dark sense. Assigned to an infantry brigade of the 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell, Ky., my two year hitch would be to safely fill the ranks of the 4,011 “Screaming Eagles” that had been killed in action in the war zone, along with over 18,000  wounded there on the ground  and in the air of that faraway land.

For perspective, and while honoring the proud history of my division during World War II, the 101st lost less than half the number of casualties in the European-centered theater than it lost in Vietnam -- 1,766 killed-in-action, 9,328 total casualties -- despite the decisive  battles fought by the 101st in World War II. These included the D-Day parachute landing behind the German defenses at Omaha Beach, Normandy, France in June 1944, Open Market Garden in the Netherlands in September 1944 and the Battle of the Bulge - Siege of Bastogne, Belgium, December 1944. 

My intention is not to review the history of these American wars, or the 101st Airborne Division. It is rather to bring to light the reason we as individuals, and as a country, engage in these sorrowful conflicts over time, and why I made the choice I did to join the fight when I was so young. Just as our fledgling nation engaged in revolt against British rule in 1775, declared its independence in 1776 and ratified the U.S. Constitution in 1788, we must acknowledge, honor and remember the hundreds of thousands of soldiers and citizens that answered the call and fought the fight for this country and the democracy that has been hard-won.

Today we are experiencing in real time the erosion and destruction of our constitutional and democratic guardrails by an off-the-rails president and his unempathetic, unqualified and authoritarian administration. A president who called deceased American veterans of war “losers” and “suckers” as he toured the Aisne-Marne American  Cemetery in France in 2018, and said of John McCain: “He’s not a war hero. He’s a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.” This president, our commander-in-chief, who during a 2017 Memorial Day visit to Arlington National Cemetery with then-Chief of Staff John Kelly, asked Kelly, whose son was killed in Afghanistan, “I don’t get it. What was in it for them?”

What was in it for them? What was in it for those that answered the call and  went to war, died on the battlefield, wounded and maimed, taken prisoner, missed in action and even today suffer the trauma of their wartime experience? What was in it for them? They did not do it for themselves; they did it for each other, for brothers and sisters in arms fighting on either side of them, for future generations – you and me, and to preserve democracy, our liberty, equality, self-determination and justice for all. 

Let us never forget and let us never give in to autocracy and the division that it foments. Let us come together as a nation to celebrate and cherish our democracy, and to remember with honor those that helped to preserve it.

Peter Moore is a Vietnam veteran and an Antrim resident.