Trump honors fallen, families in D.C. address

Brittany Jacobs (left) watches as her son, Christian Jacobs, 6, meets President Donald Trump (right) and Vice President Mike Pence on Monday at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia. Christian’s father, Marine Sgt. Christopher Jacobs, died in a training accident in 2011.
Brittany Jacobs (left) watches as her son, Christian Jacobs, 6, meets President Donald Trump (right) and Vice President Mike Pence on Monday at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia. Christian’s father, Marine Sgt. Christopher Jacobs, died in a training accident in 2011.

ARLINGTON, Va. -- President Donald Trump on Monday expressed the nation's "boundless" gratitude for the ultimate sacrifice paid by Americans defending the United States, dedicating his first Memorial Day address as commander in chief to a top Cabinet secretary and two other families who lost loved ones.

In the somber, annual observance at Arlington National Cemetery, Trump recounted the stories of Green Beret Capt. Andrew Byers of Colorado Springs, Colo., and Christopher Horton of the Oklahoma National Guard in the presence of Byers' parents and Horton's widow.

Trump also singled out for special mention Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly, a retired Marine four-star general whose son, Marine 2nd Lt. Robert Kelly, was killed in November 2010 after he stepped on a land mine while on patrol in southern Afghanistan.

Kelly's other son, Johnny, is getting ready for his fifth military deployment. A son-in-law, Jake, is a wounded warrior.

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To all Gold Star families, Trump said of their lost service members: "They each had their own names, their own stories, their own beautiful dreams. But they were all angels sent to us by God, and they all share one title in common, and that is the title of hero, real heroes."

"Though they were here only a brief time before God called them home, their legacy will endure forever," Trump said.

Horton, a sniper sent to Afghanistan in 2011, died in a gunbattle with the Taliban near the Pakistan border three months into his deployment.

Addressing Horton's weeping widow, Trump said, "Jane, America grieves with you."

Byers was on his third combat tour and, Trump said, ran through smoke and a hail of bullets to rescue an Afghan soldier when he was killed in November. To Byers' parents, Trump said, "We stand in awe of your son and his courageous sacrifice."

Trump also recognized former U.S. Sen. and GOP presidential nominee Bob Dole, 93, who suffered long-term injuries during World War II. He attended the ceremony along with his wife, Elizabeth Dole, also a former U.S. senator.

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Like his three most recent predecessors, Trump never served in combat nor the active-duty military, and at one point during his campaign he drew backlash for denigrating the service of Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., a Navy pilot who spent 5½ years as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam. "He's not a war hero," Trump said at the time. "He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren't captured."

Trump never apologized for those remarks, but in his speech Monday he lavished warm praise on other veterans.

"As we honor the brave warriors who gave their lives for ours, spending their last moments on this earth in defense of this country and of its people, words cannot measure the depth of their devotion, the purity of their love or the totality of their courage," Trump said.

"We only hope that every day we can prove worthy not only of their sacrifice and service, but of the sacrifice made by the families and loved ones they left behind. Special, special people," he said.

Before the remarks, Trump laid a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, touching it for a long moment before stepping away. He then rested his hand on his heart as a bugler played taps.

The president, who has been under siege by investigations into contacts between Russia and his associates, including his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, smiled and seemed to enjoy the enthusiastic welcome by a supportive crowd.

Sticking closely to his prepared text, Trump did not mention the various wars that the United States is currently fighting, including the battle against the Islamic State militant group in Iraq and Syria or the war in Afghanistan.

The Pentagon has proposed sending another 5,000 troops to Afghanistan to bolster the force that has been fighting there since shortly after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Some of Trump's political advisers, including Steve Bannon, worry about a slippery slope into nation building, but the president has not publicly indicated which way he is leaning.

The president was accompanied to Arlington cemetery by Vice President Mike Pence, Defense Secretary James Mattis and Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as well as a slew of advisers and Cabinet members, including veterans Secretary David Shulkin and housing Secretary Ben Carson.

After the address, Trump visited a section of the cemetery for U.S. service members killed in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. The White House said Trump visited the grave site of Robert Kelly, who was laid to rest in Section 60.

Asked what meaning Memorial Day held for him, John Kelly said: "Sad."

Missing in action

While thousands of deceased veterans are accounted for, about 80,000 service members remain missing in action.

Data from the Defense Department's POW/MIA Accounting Agency outlines the scale of the number of those still considered lost in action. The missing originated from each of the 50 states and any number of U.S. territories -- including the Philippines, which was an American commonwealth at the time of World War II.

The three states with the most missing native service members are New York, California and Pennsylvania. Were it a state, the Philippines would rank fourth on this list, with 4,533 service members listed as missing. Relative to population, West Virginia, the District of Columbia and Iowa are missing the most service members.

The geography of those losses maps to the most significant U.S. conflicts of the 20th century. More than 10,000 Americans are considered missing after service in the Philippines, with thousands more missing in the surrounding waters. About 5,800 are missing in the Solomon Islands. More than 5,000 are missing on the Korean Peninsula. Thousands are missing in the South Pacific, in the North Atlantic and across Western Europe.

The POW/MIA agency continually updates its data as it locates the remains of those missing in action. On May 19, the agency announced that it had accounted for the remains of Marine Corps Reserve Cpl. Henry Andregg Jr., who was killed on the first day of fighting at Tarawa atoll in November 1943. Andregg's remains had been interred in Honolulu and were identified this month using laboratory analysis.

More than 2,000 others have been similarly accounted for. But many, particularly those lost at sea, probably never will be.

Information for this article was contributed by Darlene Superville of The Associated Press; by Peter Baker of The New York Times; and by Philip Bump of The Washington Post.

A Section on 05/30/2017

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