Thank you very much for inviting me to participate in this Veterans Day ceremony on this beautiful fall morning. It is a great honor to be with you.

I want to share with you the words of a soldier which express much better than I can the meaning of this
Veterans Day. His name was John McCrae and he gave his poem the title “In Flanders Fields”:

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Some might ask what the words of a British soldier who died far from here almost a century ago mean to us this morning in Connecticut. I answer that they mean everything, because they remind us that the soldier acts not for glory, or for pay, but to service us here at home, to protect those of us who are so incredibly fortunate to live in this great country.

At this very hour a soldier is climbing a dusty mountain trail in Afghanistan, another is patrolling a dark street in Baghdad, a sailor toils on the flight deck of a carrier in the Arabian Sea to keep his planes flying, another is sailing under the frigid polar ice cap in a nuclear submarine. Somewhere in our own country pilots are suited up and ready to scramble into the air to defend our skies. Every one of them, from the youngest Marine recruit stepping off the bus at Paris Island to the commanders in the Pentagon, have but one mission, one goal: to serve us and protect us and keep us free.

The next time you drive by and see a veterans monument, think of it not as a stone but as a window into both the past and the future – a window where you can see men huddled by a fire at Valley Forge, others defending the
White House when it was burned in the War of 1812, the thousands who died on both sides at Gettysburg, some who are buried in Flanders fields, others wading ashore on the Normandy beaches, a patrol surviving the bitter cold of a Korean winter, a unit on the move in the steamy jungles of Viet Nam, some reconnoitering the dry sands of Kuwait, and yes, this morning some fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.

To all of them who have gone before, and to today’s Veterans throughout Connecticut, we say thank you from the bottom of our hearts. We are forever grateful to you. We will catch the torch you throw, we are equal to the task you set before us of continuing to build this great nation and we will never, never, never forget you!