ONE HERO'S PLEDGE

Martin Treptow, a native of Cippewa Falls, Wisconsin, was working as a barber in Cherokee, Iowa, in 1917 when he enlisted in the Army to fight in World War I.  His regiment arrived in Frace in December of that year, and he wrote a pledge in his diary as a New Year's resolution for 1918.  Ronald Reagan, in his first inaugral address, spoke of Treptow's fate:

Under a market lies a young man, Martin Treptow, who left his job in a small town barbershop in 1917 to go to France with the famed Rainbow Division.  There, on the western front, he was killed trying to carry a message between battalions under heavy artillery fire.

We're told that on his body was found his diary.  On the flyleaf under the heading, "My Pledge," he had written these words: "America must win this war.  Therefore I will work, I will save, and I will sacrifice, I will endure, I will fight cheerfully and do my utmost, as if the issue of the whole struggle depended on me alone."

The crisis we are facing today....[requires] our best effort, and our willingness to believe in ourselves and to believe in our capacity to perform great deeds; to believe that together, with God's help, we can and will resolve the problems which now confront us.

And after all, why shouldn't we believe that?  We are Americans.

(The American Patriot's Almanac)