September 15, 2001

Dear Members,

I’ve lived 41 years in America, and have never been called upon to serve. In that time, our soil had never been attacked until September 11.

Art Hipp enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps on December 8, 1941, making an abrupt change in life plans. Bill McComber served in Vietnam, where it was so hot one could never breathe a full breath. Many members of PLSC are veterans of the World, Korean, Vietnam and Gulf wars. No enemy has attacked our shores in fifty five years. Supposedly, the A-bomb wiped out any further thought of invasion on this Earth.

I was in Fifth Grade in 1971, and my young mind assumed that Vietnam was a never-ending fixture of life. My friends discussed openly what we would do when our draft notice came in a few years. I would be a jet fighter. None of us wanted to be like the hippies who were dodging the draft.

My Eighth -Grade schoolmates performed a show called “Up With People”. I remember the out-of-key and enthusiastic chant: “Freedom isn’t freeeee! Freedom isn’t freeee! You gotta pay the price, you gotta sacrifice, for your li-ber-tyyy!”

No, I wouldn’t know how a bullet feels. I have only attempted to understand by reading about our wars. I could only weep for the victims of terror: The Israel Olympic team murdered, the 52 American hostages in Iran, 183 Americans in Beirut, the U.S.S. Cole, and untold numbers of hijackings and car-bombs in other countries.

Surveyors are required for a free society. A Republic is built from, and can not exist without private property ownership and delineation. Our enemy wants to take that away. Now I know. I’m ready to kill them, before they kill any more of us, and die trying.

Sincerely yours,

Warren D. Ward, PLS