American Minutewith
Bill Federer
Army Day, Navy Day and Air Force Day were combined in 1949 to be Armed Forces Day, celebrated the 3rd Saturday of May.
Army Day formerly was the date the US entered World War I, Navy Day was President Theodore Roosevelt's birthday and Air Force Day was the day the War Department established a division of aeronautics.
On Armed Forces Day, MAY 15, 1995, Secretary of Defense William Perry said:
"In World War II, the United States Armed Forces helped defeat the forces of aggression and oppression on two sides of the globe...
In the Cold War, we faced down the global Soviet threat.
Today, our forces stand guard, at home and abroad, against a range of potential threats."
Secretary Perry continued:
"On Armed Forces Day, the nation says thank you to our men and women in uniform, their families, and the communities that support them...
Daniel Webster said, 'God grants liberty only to those who love it and are always ready to guard and defend it.'"
U.S. Army Chaplain Father William Thomas Cummings, who was among those captured by the Japanese at Bataan, Philippines, and died when the prisoner "hell ship" he was on was hit with a torpedo, said in a battlefield sermon:
"There are no atheists in the foxholes."
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