When you serve in the US Armed Forces, a sense of watch out for your buddy, and he'll watch out for you is instilled in you all throughout your service time. I can't think of any other place where you could make a better friend. Time and time again GI's make countless sacrifices for one another.
No one ever wanted to dare know the sacrifice that so few made for so many. Its been about 25 years now since it happened, and I think at last, its time to talk about it. There is no more Soviet Union today. But at the time the Iranians took the hostages, the US and the Soviet Union could have become easily embroiled in a world war if the US did to Iran what Iran deserved to have done to it.
I couldn't believe that I was all alone with part of the cross that Christ had carried. It felt so strange to think that just an ordinary person such as myself would now be in the presence of the symbol that had forever changed the world. Just a short while ago I had sailed the seven seas and had behaved like quite an ordinary sailor.