Speechless.

CHEATHAM: The thing that sticks in my mind, I guess, more than anything else — and this is something that has happened. My wife teaches first grade. This past week, one of the kids in her class, a little first grader’s dad is getting sent to Afghanistan. And he was really sad. And she said, ‘well, you know, your dad is doing something really good. He’s going to a country where people there are trying to take away the freedoms of other people there, keep them from living a good life.

So he’s leaving to do something good.’ And one of the little girls in class just on her own — and this has never been talked about in class, because my wife doesn’t do that — said, ‘It’s kind of like Mr. Cheatham, he left to make our schools better.’ And when I heard that, that gave me a reason—” (drowned out by applause.)

Actually, this is what it’s like serving on the front-lines.

US army soldiers from Company C, 1st Battalion, 52nd Aviation Regiment, MEDEVAC team carry a wounded colleague (C) through a flooded field to a US Army Blackhawk helicopter in Kandahar province in southern Afghanistan on March 28, 2011. (AFP PHOTO/Peter PARKS)