A true winter soldier's guide

To our sons and daughters in the military,

You have chosen to travel down a long, dangerous road. Death will be your constant companion on this journey, but you must not allow Death to become your guide or your friend. Make these timeless principles your guideposts lest you stray from the straight and narrow path and lose your way:

• the truth which America's Founders told in their Declaration of Independence
• the faith professed in the letter written by LTC William Barret Travis while under siege at the Alamo
• the rebellion to tyrants of Patrick Henry's speech in Saint John's Church
• the spirit of revolution which filled the Minutemen on Lexington Green and at the North Bridge in Concord, Massachusetts
• the compassion of the bloody footprints in the snow at Valley Forge, Bastogne, and the Chosin Reservoir
• the righteousness in the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier
• the salvation in the poem by Francis Scott Key which became the words of our national anthem
• the unity with God implied by the doctrine of Manifest Destiny
• the loyalty in all of our pledges and oaths
• the knowledge that America is a City on a Hill, as expressed in the words that John Winthrop borrowed from the Sermon on the Mount
• the gospel of peace and world-wide welcome in the sonnet by Emma Lazarus which will forever be associated with our Statue of Liberty
• the concern for the fate of the soul with an expectation of heavenly reward which can be found in the opening lines of Thomas Paine's essay "The American Crisis"

Put on the whole armor of God. Learn the difference between murder and war. Shun people who urge you to do bad things by saying they will accomplish good purposes. Live each moment as if it were your last. Seek God and love Him with all your heart, mind, body, and soul. For only His light can safely guide you on your perilous journey through the Land of the Dead.

You are in our prayers,

mom and dad