Thanks a lot.
It is a more serious note.
So I just wanted to perhaps make more of a statement than an — give more of an explanation
of what amounts to be a traditional press interaction.
Most Americans don't know what happens when we lose one of our soldiers, sailors, and
Marines or Coast Guardsmen in combat.
Their buddies wrap them up in whatever passes as a shroud.
Puts them on a helicopter and sends them home.
Their first stop is when they are packed in ice, typically at the air head and flown to
usually Europe.
Where they're then packed in ice again and flown to Dover Air Force Base, where Dover
takes care of the remains.
Embalms them.
Meticulously dresses them in their uniform with the medals they earned and puts them
on another airplane to take them home.
A very, very good movie is Taking Chance.
Chance Phelps was killed under my command right next to me.
It's worth seeing that if you've never seen it.
That's the process.
While that's happening, a casualty officer typically goes to the home very early in the
morning and waits for the first lights to come on.
And then he knocks on the door, typically the mom and dad will answer, the wife.
And if there is a wife, this is happening in two different places, if the parents are
divorced, three different places, and the casualty officer proceeds to break the heart
of a family member.
And stays with this family until — well, for a long, long time.
That's what happens.
Who are these young men and women, they are the best 1 percent this country produces.
Most Americans don't know them.
Many don't know any who knows any one of them.
But they are the very best this country produces and volunteer to protect our country when
there's nothing in our country anymore that seems to suggest that self-service to the
nation is not only appropriate but required.
That's all right.
Who writes letters to the families?
Typically the company commander.
In my case the commander, division commander, secretary of defense, typically the service
chief and the president.
Typically writes the letter.
Typically the only phone calls the family receives are the most important phone calls
they could imagine, and that is from their buddies.
In my case, after my son was killed, his friends were calling us from Afghanistan telling us
what a great guy he was.
Those are the only phone calls that really matter.
And yeah, the letters count to a degree, but there's not much that really can take the
edge off for what the family members are going through.
Some presidents have elected to call; all presidents I believe have elected to send
letters.
If you elect to call a family like this, it is about the most difficult thing you could
imagine.
There's no perfect way to make that phone call.
When I took this job and talked to President Trump about how to do it, my first recommendation
was he not do it.
Because it's not the phone call that parents, family members are looking forward to.
It's nice to do, in my opinion, in any event.
He asked me about previous presidents, and I said I could tell you that President Obama,
who was my commander in chief when I was on active duty, did not call my family.
That was not a criticism.
That was just to simply say I don't believe President Obama called.
That's not a negative thing.
I don't believe President Bush called in all cases.
I don't believe any president particularly when the casualty rates are very, very high
that presidents call.
I believe they all write.
So when I gave that explanation to our president three days ago, he elected to make phone calls
in the case of the four young men who we lost in Niger at the earlier part of this month,
but then he said how do you make these calls?
If you're not in the family, if you've never worn the uniform, if you've never been in
combat, you can't even imagine how to make that call, but I think he very bravely does
make those calls.
The call in question that he made yesterday — a day before yesterday now — were to
four family members, the four fallen, and remember, there's a next of kin designated
by the individual; if he's married, that's typically the spouse.
If he's not married, that's typically the parents, unless the parents are divorced and
he selects one of them.
If he didn't get along with his parents, he'll select a sibling.
But the phone call is made to the next of kin only if the next of kin agrees to take
the phone call.
Sometimes they don't.
So a precall is made.
The president of the United States, will you accept the call, and typically they all accept
the call.
So he called four people the other day and expressed his condolences in the best way
he could.
And he said to me, what do I say?
I said to him, sir, there's nothing you can do to lighten the burden on these families.
Let me tell you what I tell them, let me tell you what my best friend told me because he
was my casualty officer: He said Kel, he was doing exactly what he wanted to do when he
was killed.
He knew what he was getting into by joining that 1 percent.
He knew what the possibilities were.
Because we're at war.
And when he died, and the four cases we're talking about Niger and my son's cases in
Afghanistan, when he died he was surrounded by the best men on this Earth, his friends.
That's what the president tried to say to four families the other day.
I was stunned when I came to work yesterday morning and broken-hearted at what I saw a
member of Congress doing, a member of Congress who listened in on a phone call from the president
of the United States to a young wife.
And in his way tried to express that opinion that he's a brave man, a fallen hero, he knew
what he was getting himself into because he enlisted, there's no reason to enlist, he
enlisted and was where he wanted to be, exactly where he wanted to be with exactly the people
he wanted to be with when his life was taken.
That was the message.
That was the message that was transmitted.
It stuns me that a member of Congress would have listened in on that conversation.
Absolutely stuns me.
And I thought at least that was sacred.
You know, when I was a kid growing up a lot of things were sacred in our country.
Women were sacred.
Looked upon with great honor.
That's obviously not the case anymore, as we've seen from recent cases.
Life was sacred.
That's gone.
Religion.
That seems to be gone as well.
Gold Star families, I think that left in the convention over the summer.
I just thought the selfless devotion that brings a man or woman to die in the battlefield,
I thought that might be sacred.
And when I listened to this woman and what she was saying and what she was doing on TV,
the only thing I could do to collect my thoughts was to go and walk among the finest men and
women on this Earth.
And you can always find them.
Because they're in Arlington National Cemetery.
Went over there for an hour and a half, walked among the stones, some of whom I put there
because they were doing what I told them to do when they were killed.
I'll end with this.
In April of 2015, while still on active duty, I went to the dedication of the new FBI field
office in Miami.
And it was dedicated to two men who were killed in a firefight in Miami against drug traffickers
in 1986.
A guy by the name of Grogan and Duke.
Grogan almost retired, 53 years old.
Duke, I think less than a year on the job.
They got in a gunfight and killed.
Three FBI agents were there, wounded, now retired.
We go down and give a brilliant memorial speech to all of the men and women of the FBI who
serve our country so well and law enforcement so well.
There were family members there.
Some of the children were only 3, 4 years old when their dads were killed on that street
in Miami-Dade.
Three of the men that survived the fight were there and gave rendition of how brave those
men were and how they gave their lives.
And a congresswoman stood up and, in the long tradition of empty barrels making the most
noise, stood up there in all of that and talked about how she was instrumental in getting
the funding for that building.
How she took care of her constituents because she got the money and just called up President
Obama and on that phone call he gave the money, the $20 million to build a building, and she
sat down.
And we were stunned.
Stunned that she had done it.
Even for someone that is that empty a barrel, we were stunned.
But none of us went to the press and criticized.
None of us stood up and were appalled.
We just said okay, fine.
So I still hope as you write your stories and I appeal to America that let's not let
this maybe last thing that's held sacred in our society, a young man, young woman going
out and giving his or her life for our country, let's try to somehow keep that sacred.
But Rowe did a great deal yesterday by the selfish behavior by a member of Congress.
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