Memorial Day is always treated with extra respect because it is the one day set aside during the year to honor those people who have laid down their lives so that our nation can remain a free and independent republic.

Without those who were willing to risk their lives so others may live in peace and freedom, the United States of America would long ago have been enslaved by tyrants and dictators who were evil personified.

While we honor the dead of all wars, and all veterans and currently serving members of the armed forces, this year World War II veterans are receiving special attention since it is the 70th anniversary of the end of that history-changing war.

The World War II generation faced one of the blackest challenges in all history, Nazi, fascist and imperialist forces overrunning much of the world in the late 1930s and early 1940s. Those were indeed dark days, and it took real courage to face up to and defeat those ruthless and seemingly unstoppable military machines.

In the words of Sir Winston Churchill, it took years of “blood, toil, tears and sweat” to accomplish final victory in 1945, but the men and women of the Allied nation accomplished what seemed so impossible.

Reflecting on the virtues of the American soldier, Gen. Douglas MacArthur once said, “He belongs to history as furnishing one of the greatest examples of successful patriotism. He belongs to posterity as the instructor of future generations in the principles of liberty and freedom. He belongs to the present, to us, by his virtues and by his achievements.”

The generations that have come up since World War II are the fortunate heirs to a great civilization whose fate hung in the balance 70 years ago.

On this Memorial Day, as we remember the Americans who gave their lives so that we may continue to live in peace and freedom, there can be no doubt about the valor of those who rest in our nation’s cemeteries at home and abroad.

It is right and fitting that we take time today to pay special tribute to the honorable war dead of all our nation’s wars, and especially World War II.

(Rick Hickman/American Press)