No, Freedom is NOT free, but it sure is not won by soldiers. It is won in spite of state terror. In the US, it was won by folks like Frank Little, who came back from WWI a pacifist. For his service, his speech against the war got him hanged under a railway trestle. It was won by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., writing from a Birmingham jail cell, it was won by Lord Richard Buckley, who gave his life for frees peach in my very home, in New York City, in my theater, where he died for the right to say what is on your mind on a New York Stage. It was won by Tom Fox in Iraq, by Bonheoffer in Germany, by the persistent gentle people who would not be silenced.
All the best
Lorcan