Frederick W. Smith - Memorial Day 2024

Thank you, Jim. It's a privilege to be here today to join fellow Vietnam veterans and the families and loved ones of the heroes whose names are on this wall, forever memorialized. It's also an honor to share this stage today with Commander Peterson and General Barbash. No one who served in Vietnam did not revere the helo crews and idolize the combat nurses who, just as the vignette you heard demonstrated, their loving care and comforting faces were the last memories of so many people on this wall. I'd like to commend the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, Jim, what a job you do, and the National Park Service superintendent to preserve the legacy. And Superintendent Reinhold just told me that there are 5 million visitors to this site every year. While mournful, it recognizes each and every one of these brave men and women, and there are 58,300 names on these granite slabs, with the V depicting the most fearsome fighting of the Vietnam War, including the Tet Offensive in early 1968. I have many friends whose names are on the wall, and especially in that V. Let me tell you about six of them as representatives of all of them, and I think Jim is going to put their photographs up on the website if you want to see what these men look like. You can. Dick Shing was my college classmate and friend. He was in the famed 101st Airborne. He was KIA on 17 February '68 during Tet. Best I can figure, I was about 10 miles away. Second Lieutenant Richard Persing lies alongside his grandfather, General of the Armies John J. Persing, at the highest point of Arlington Cemetery. Yesterday, my wife Diane and my youngest son and my youngest daughter went up to see Dick and put some flowers on his grave. As I sat there and thought about Dick, I thought what he might have become, given his enormous charm, wit, and grace. Staff Sergeant Richard J. Jackson was my first platoon sergeant when I joined India, 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines in May 1968, specifically 10 May '68. I doubt I'd be here today without his guidance and friendship. Jack was killed on 6 September '67 on Operation Swift, one of the toughest battles of the war. Jack's buried in ICP Long Island. His son Ricardo was an outstanding FedEx executive for many years, and his wife Mary remains a friend of one of our daughters who's a commander in the Navy Reserve assigned to the Marines as an ER nurse. General, two of my platoon leaders after I became skipper of K-3-5, Jack Ruggles and Joe Campbell, are on the wall. Jack was a Tennessee V through and through. Jack was lost during Tet, and Joe on Operation Allen Brook, 15 June '68. I visited Joe in Stoneham, Massachusetts last year, and I'll stop by to see Jack soon in June on a trip I have up to East Tennessee. I'll also visit Ruggles Field, a beautiful little league park overlooking the river just south of Knoxville. We named it in his honor. Hank Kolakowski was a graduate of the Naval Academy, class of 1961. He commanded I Company on Allen Brook and was killed at the same time Joe Campbell was. He would have been a general officer, I'm sure. His son has worked for FedEx for over 30 years. I stopped in and saw him a few weeks ago down in Fort Lauderdale. He's a spitting image of his father, who Matt never knew. And week before last, two other of my daughters and I took some flowers to Father Vince Capodanno's grave on Staten Island. Padre, I know you know about him. Vince was our chaplain in 3-5 in the summer of '67. His headstone is covered with remembrances and military coins, befitting the recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor. The Grunt Padre, as his biographer called him, he was a hell of a poker player, I can tell you that much. Father Vince was lost trying to save a corpsman, 4 September '67, two days before Sergeant Jackson on Swift. Let me mention a seventh name I did not know well. Captain David W. Meyers took over as CO of K-3-5 after my 13th month, while I was training for a second tour with Marine Observation Squadron 2. I learned that David was KIA 20 November '68 in a CH-46 Sea Knight landing in a hot LZ, along with the crew and a number of his and my Marines. As all of the veterans of the close fighting in Vietnam know, it was a matter of luck, a fateful step for a few inches that separated the survivors and those we honor today. Let me tell you something I know. The North Vietnamese Army was one of the best in history and willing to accept endlessly the loss of their brave soldiers. I'd like to say a few things about the Vietnam War that differ from conventional wisdom, but beforehand, the Marine Band kindly accommodated my request to have one of the President's Own play 'Il Silenzio.' Many of you may not know about 'Il Silenzio.' It sounds a bit like Taps and has some of the same notes. And Taps will end this ceremony, when we will render a final hand salute to the beloved souls on this wall. But I thought 'Il Silenzio,' given its providence in a similar setting at the American Cemetery in Margraten, a few miles from the big FedEx hub at Liège, Belgium, was an appropriate tribute for the friends I just told you about. And before I make my final remarks, let me tell you why families in the Netherlands since World War II have adopted each and every one of the 8,288 American soldiers at Margraten to keep their stories alive to this day in their individual homes. Since 1965, on Remembrance Day, 11 November, what we call Veterans Day, 'Il Silenzio' has been played in honor of those who lie in eternal repose as the liberators of Holland 20 years earlier. Now, Staff Sergeant Brent Proes will render this honor as we sit, and I hope you will contemplate the lives of the men I just spoke about.

Thank you, Sergeant. You know, perhaps more hopeful, don't you think? Gives the right tenor to these great men's commemoration. You know, perhaps because my career in business has kept me heavily involved in Asia for many decades, I have a different view of the Vietnam War than the conventional wisdom you hear about, and I'm going to tell you about it. I believe all of us understand, in retrospect, often bitterly, the American strategy until mid-1968 was foolish and flawed. In that regard, I was stunned in 1993 to hear a British Brigadier, Peter McDonald, quote General Westmoreland that he had not studied the French Indochina War, nor did the US Army teach its history. Search and destroy and body counts were the futile goals so many of these men died for. Bombing jungle trails and truck parks up north was equally ineffective and cost the lives or capture of many hundreds of our airmen. After Tet, despite a change in commanding generals and a highly effective new strategy, the American public slowly washed its hands of the entire endeavor, and Congress reneged on our commitments to our allies in the South, consigning millions to misery for years. What a tragedy for all involved. Brigadier McDonald, like most, felt Eisenhower's Domino Theory, picked up by Kennedy and Johnson, was dead wrong, as the Vietnamese had loathed the Chinese for a thousand years. What McDonald did not know when he wrote the biography of General Giap of North Vietnam was that China had sent 320,000 of their soldiers in 1968 to backfill the NVA battalions being sent to the South to fight us. USSR supplied North Vietnam advisors and massive amounts of aircraft, artillery, rockets, weapons, ammunition, and the largest and most sophisticated anti-aircraft capabilities in history to that time. God bless those pilots that went up north. I agree with Lee Kuan Yew, the great Asian statesman and founder of Singapore, that against the strong liberal criticism of the American war in Vietnam, he, and I'm quoting him now, took the contrarian view and explained that America's stand was crucial for a non-communist Asia, which I've seen develop with my own eyes. After 20 Asian wars and tens of millions of people killed from the 1920s until the Vietnamese and Chinese resumed their adversarial relations and fought in 1979, when the North Vietnamese Army taught the Chinese a thing or two, it was the miracle of trade that made America rich. First Japan, then the Four Tigers—South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore—and even Mao's China embraced market economics a decade later, leading to Asia being the fastest-growing area of the world for over 30 years. And we at FedEx were proud to play a role in this unprecedented economic transformation. As America's great World War II Secretary of State, Cordell Hull, had prophesied, 'When goods cross borders, armies rarely do.' That's the fundamental difference between today's war in Ukraine and the threats in the Pacific. There's a lot to lose in another war in Asia, but not so much when all you sell is oil and gas, which you can sell to anybody, and little vodka and caviar. America's opening of our markets after World War II was farsighted, and it rebuilt Germany and Japan and set the stage for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of millions to escape extreme poverty through global trade, especially since the Vietnam War ended. At the same time, global commerce vastly enriched our country, the United States. While they will likely not know it, and many will not acknowledge it, these countless millions owe in part their unprecedented prosperity to those who lost their lives serving honorably in Vietnam. We forget the sacrifice and the importance of commerce in avoiding war at our peril. For those of us who have had long lives, our fallen comrades were entitled to but never had. I hope we've honored you with some contributions to the much better world your sacrifice enabled. FedEx was largely built by Vietnam veterans, from package handlers to truck drivers to former POWs who helped pioneer our vast global air system of today, including, as we stand here, 11 Tri-7 freighters going east and west across the vast Pacific. I think all of us, in large measure, were driven to make a positive contribution to humanity after the devastation and brutality we saw in Vietnam. I'm sure all of you in this audience think about those on the wall and those with a personal connection often, and not just on Memorial Day. In my case, that's every day. We're dedicated to keeping the memories of each of these great heroes alive, just as the Dutch do their Americans in Margraten. And now, I'd like for every Vietnam veteran that's out there to stand up. If you can't stand up, hold your hand up. If you can't hold your hand up, somebody alongside. If you stand up and take this, I wanted to salute every one of you, every one of you, and to tell you how proud I was to serve with you. It was the honor of my life. Welcome home.