Remember the Heroes--Spoken Word Given by Lloyd D. Newell

Remember the Heroes

Delivered By: Lloyd D. Newell

In the comfort and security of our lives, we sometimes forget the debt we owe to those who left behind their own comfort and security and paid the ultimate price that we might live free. When the United States entered World War I, David Endicott Putnam was a freshman at Harvard University. Too young to enlist in the fledgling American aviation corps, he traveled to France, where he served with distinction as a pilot. A year later, he joined the Americans as a flight commander of the 139th squadron. One of the most highly decorated Allied pilots of the war, David was credited with bringing down as many as 20 enemy aircraft. In letters to his mother, he wrote: “Combat after combat comes my way, and without boasting I’ll say that I generally meet them head on. . . . ‘You nearly lost little David’ again this morning. . . . A miracle saved me. . . . This I will say, that if I go, I will die fighting.” On September 13, 1918, David noticed several enemy planes pursuing an Allied biplane. He attacked, and he saved the biplane, but he was unable to save himself. He was shot through the heart and perished. In a letter he had left for his mother in the event of his death, David said: “There is no question about the hereafter of men who give themselves in such a cause. If I am called upon to make it, I shall go with a grin of satisfaction and a smile.”1 Since the beginning of time, numberless courageous men and women like David Endicott Putnam have demonstrated the greatest love of all—they gave their lives for their friends. As the beneficiaries of their sacrifice, we can answer our own call of duty and make our own sacrifices, whatever they may be, the way David Putnam did—“with a grin of satisfaction and a smile.” This may be the best way to honor the memory of these noble heroes. 1 In M. A. DeWolfe Howe, Memoirs of the Harvard Dead in the War against Germany, 5 vols. (1920–24), 4:193, 197, 199. Program #4158