Today, the President of the United States will visit the small town of Aisne, in northern France, to honor the memory, on behalf of the American people, of the almost 2300 Americans buried at the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery.
These Americans died during World War I preventing the German invasion of Paris during June 1918. They were not “suckers and losers” as former President Trump called them in 2018 when he refused to visit the cemetery. They were American heroes who suffered more than 9,777 casualties defending the freedom of France at the Battle of Belleau Woods. They fought so valiantly, so tenaciously, that the Germans referred to them as Teufel Hunden (Devil Dogs) which is an honorific the U.S. Marines still carry today.
Today, the President of the United States will remind the world that freedom is not free. It is paid for in the blood and sacrifice of the American military every day and that those who have paid that price on our behalf for the last 249 years are not “suckers and losers.” They are heroes. They are our respected and honored dead, and we, as a nation, should never forget the ultimate sacrifice they made those days, outside of Paris, in June 1918.
