Former U.S. Army soldier Ron Capps, a combat veteran who served in Afghanistan, tells
Newsmax TV that Americans ought to take a moment during Memorial Day to remember the soldiers who died on their behalf.
"One of the things that's been happening recently is something called
'Go Silent,' which is simply stopping what we're doing for one minute at noon on Memorial Day, just to pause and think about the cost of some of these wars," Capps, who is the founder and director of the Veterans Writing Project, told Miranda Khan and John Bachman on "Newsmax Now" on Monday.
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"We lost just under half a million men in the Civil War, over 400,000 men in the Second World War. And the numbers, even though they're smaller for these wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, they're still significant," he explained. The two wars combined have claimed 6,806 lives.
Capps started an organization for veterans called the
Veterans Writing Project, which works to help veterans tell their stories about their experiences on the battlefield.
"We travel around the country giving veterans and their family members the skills and the confidence they need to tell their own stories, and it's important that we do get those stories out," he explained.
"For those of us who served in combat, the loss of our colleagues, the loss of our comrades weighs very heavily upon our memories and for us to be able to say, 'I'm telling this story for someone I lost because he or she can no longer tell their own story,' It's really important that we do that and that we give others the opportunity to tell that story as often as possible," the retired U.S. Army veteran added.
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