Our soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines and Coast Guardsmen volunteer to protect and defend this country and all its citizens, and do so with honor, integrity and excellence. Our nation continually asks them to do more and more, with less and less.
'Home' is an important word for our soldiers, sailors, airmen and women. They regularly put their lives at risk in order to make us feel safe in our own homes while fighting to provide overseas communities with that same security.
Growing up, I didn't really know who the Tuskegee Airmen were.
From the depths of the Pacific to the deserts of Iraq, more than a million American soldiers, Airmen, midshipmen, and Marines have laid down their lives for their friends, their families and our nation.
I read many riveting escape-and-evade accounts of airmen and of the Resistance networks organized to hide them and then send them on grueling treks across the Pyrenees to safety. But it was the people I met in France and Belgium who made the period come alive for me. They had lived it.
I think all my characters haunt me. Especially the real-life ones, like Master Chief Carl Brashear, the Tuskagee Airmen. Every time I see a military person, it gives me such a sense of pride but also a sense of responsibility to project excellence when representing them.
If we're going to spend more money, it should go to the soldiers, Marines, and airmen to increase their salaries.
Standing beside each one of our brave soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines is a loving, supportive, and dedicated family whose sacrifice is a true service to our great nation.
But it's been a great, humbling - and I've been very honored to have the opportunity to serve and to lead and to be the representative of our soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines who are in Washington. And it's been the greatest honor of my life.
We Marines believe that God gave America the greatest gift He could bestow to man while he lived on this earth -freedom. We also believe He gave us another gift nearly as precious - our soldiers, sailors, airmen, Coast Guardsmen, and Marines - to safeguard that gift and guarantee no force on this earth can ever steal it away.
