There was a soldier named Joseph Plum Martin. Martin joined the Army when he was 17, and he fought continuously for the duration of the war - the Revolutionary War. Martin participated in the Battle of Brooklyn, the Battle of White Plains, the siege on Fort Mifflin and the Battle of Monmouth. Following the skirmishes at Whitemarsh, described below, he encamped at Valley Forge, witnessed John Andre being escorted to his execution and was also present during the climactic Siege of Yorktown. Quite a combat carreer.

Later in life Martin wrote a memoir of his time in the service. "A Narrative of a Revolutionary Soldier - Some of the Adventures, Dangers, and Sufferings of Joseph Plum Martin," is an astounding document - true source material from the Revolution - a hard look at the war from the viewpoint at the bottom - the opposite of what we normally read. The War for Independence from the point of view of a 17 year old Army private.

The conditions under which these men fought were often equal in harshness to any that our troops today or in recent decades have endured or do endure. The pictures we have seen of ragged troops trudging through snow with only bloody rags on their feet are accurate, probably not severe enough. Once, of the eve of battle, Martin wrote,

“Here I endured hardships sufficient to kill half a dozen horses. Let the reader only consider for a moment and he will still be satisfied if not sickened. In the cold month of November, without provisions, without clothing, not a scrap of either shoes or stockings to my feet or legs, and in this condition to endure a siege in such a place as that was appalling in the highest degree.”

Government shutdown? Forget Government Shutdowns. Congress had no money to pay these men.

When Americans of such strength and endurance marshal all their human reserves to endure unspeakable hardship for the sake of American Freedom, who could believe that the citizens of that time would look down upon them, the soldiers? But look down upon them they did – soldiers were a lower form of life in their time. They were given the blame for much of the hardship that the country endured during the struggle.

Martin wrote a paragraph that stunned me in its similarity to the point of view and the experiences of the grunts of the Vietnam Era. Consider this remarkable passage:

"Those men whom they wish to die on a dunghill, men, who, if they had not ventured their lives in battle, and faced poverty, disease and death for their country, to gain and maintain that Independence and liberty, in the sunny beams of which, they like reptiles are basking, they would, many or the most of them, be this moment, in as much need of help and succor, as ever the most indigent soldier was before he experienced his country's beneficence. The soldiers consider it cruel to be thus vilified, and it is cruel as the grave, to any man, when he knows his own rectitude of conduct; to have his hard services, not only debased and underrated, but scandalized and vilified. But the Revolutionary soldiers are not the only people that endure obloquy, others as meritorious, and perhaps more deserving then they, are forced to submit to ungenerous treatment."

Let that sink in for a moment. Look at the sentence I put in bold. The soldiers of the American Revolution consider it unfair cruelety that they are made out to be the bad guys in this war. It is all the more cruel, "cruel as the grave," when a man knows in his heart that the honor and hard work and risk and sacrifice that he put into his service to his nation is not only downplayed, or ignored, but more, it is actually "scandalized," he is actually made the object of public scorn.

The American Revolution. Vietnam. The more things change, the more they stay the same. Thank God the American people seem to be starting, finally, to realize the importance of military service and sacrifice and the need to recognize that service for the noble act that it is. Too late for some, that recognition, to our everlasting shame as a nation.