Secrets have power over us. Only when secrets are revealed can truth be known and freedom brought about. - Lynn Compton

But success in a military operation always feels short-lived. You shoulder your rifle and move on from there to the next battle.

Sometimes the greatest signs of strength are demonstrated when you relive the hardest parts of your life. I'm not a man easily given to emotion. I hate to cry. Yet there are three things that cause me to tear up today. One is when I talk about the love I have for America. The second I'll tell you about later in this book. The third is whenever I remember by dad's suicide.

As young people, my generation would see a lot of death. I don't think I ever grew accustomed to it. It came in darkness and fervor, by our airplanes, rifles, parachutes, and tanks. But there was something about that first death I experienced the summer of 1939 when I was just eighteen, years before the war, that stayed with me so strongly. Those first few seasons after my father died were dark indeed.