This just gave me chills!!
Happy 250! Happy 4th of July!!
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The final 10 minutes of an incredible 4th of July fireworks and concert celebrating Americaโs 250th birthday in Washington, D.C., drew a massive crowd, with President Trump and the First Lady in attendance.๐บ๐ธ
An eagle and a crane DANCED over Tokyo tonight!! ๐ฆ ๐๏ธ
Their light trails braided into a GIANT HEART and fireworks burst right through the middle!!
The whole bay went WILD!!
250 years America!! The crane says CONGRATS!! ๐บ๐ธ๐ค๐ฏ๐ต
France also celebrating Americaโs 250th!
Marquis de Lafayette is definitely smiling down from heaven right now ๐บ๐ธ ๐ซ๐ท
๐ฅ: raphaelmetivet
82 years ago today, over 10,000 Americans were either killed, wounded or missing after the D-Day invasion. They are the shoulders we stand upon. Their sacrifice is why we STAND UP for our Flag. I dedicate this song to them today. Here's "The Man."
Private Carlton Barrett was possibly the smallest man in his regiment.
5 feet 4 inches tall. 125 pounds.
On the morning of June 6, 1944, he landed at Omaha Beach in neck-deep water, machine gun fire cutting the surface all around him. He made it to shore.
Then he turned around and went back in.
A soldier was drowning. Barrett pulled him out. Then another. Then another. For hours, under constant fire, this 125-pound man waded back into the surf again and again, pulling drowning men to safety and physically carrying the wounded to evacuation boats offshore.
But he didn't stop there.
He ran dispatches the full length of the fire-swept beach. He found soldiers paralyzed by shock and calmed them back into action. He appeared wherever the crisis was worst, doing whatever needed doing, treating rank and personal safety as irrelevant details.
He did this for hours without stopping.
His Medal of Honor citation says his courage had "an inestimable effect on his comrades." That is military understatement for: this small, anonymous man held that section of beach together through sheer force of will.
He survived the war.
His comrades later said his life darkened after he came home. He lived quietly and died in 1986 in California, largely unknown outside of military history circles.
5 feet 4 inches. 125 pounds. He went back in.
Remember him.
101-year-old World War II veteran Don Graves โ the last surviving flamethrower operator from his battalion, which fought on Iwo Jima โ sings โGod Bless Americaโ at the National Memorial Day Parade.