I am a grunt. A groundpounder. A dogface. GI Joe, Tommy Atkins, whatever you want to call me. I am your soldier, no matter how I serve, and I've been around since Ugmug's people fought with their neighbors.

I've been at Waterloo, Agincourt, Khe Sanh, Dien Bien Phu, Normandy, Vimy Ridge, the Meuse, Austerlitz, Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima, Betio, Port Arthur, Pork Chop Hill, Marathon, Valmy, Pultowa, Blenheim, Quebec, Saratoga, Maldon Bridge, Hastings, King's Mountain, Missisinewa, Vicksburg, Gettysburg, Cold Harbor, and a million more battles large and small.

I was both the winner and the loser, for I fought on both sides.

I fight on my feet, but I've been taken into battle by ship, truck, airplane, glider, rowboat, horse, submarine, armored vehicle, wagon, helicopter, and even by taxi. Most of the time I've walked.

My fight is often very personal. I've fought with rifles, rocket launchers, knives, clubs, swords, bayonets, hand grenades, flamethrowers, explosives, pistols, spears, halberds, stones, chemicals, and many other weapons. Often I've fought with my hands. And I've often died.

I've crouched in holes full of mud and worse and stood up in full view. I've fought from behind parapets, fascines, corpses, sandbags, dead horses, castle walls, barbed wire, chemine de frise, burning vehicles, trees, rocks, and any place I could find cover and concealment. I have walked into battle over the bodies of both my foes and my friends.

I have fought, and fought with, every nation and people on Earth, without exception.

There is nothing that can replace me. Nothing.

I am your son, your daughter, your father, your mother, cousin, husband, lover, wife, grandchild -- I am yourself.

You send me to fight. Perhaps through your elected representatives, but it is you that send me. And it is you that must support me when I fight and, perhaps even more, when I come back to you, changed utterly.

I am your soldier.