The Best 3 1/2 Minutes you'll spend today

Have you ever heard of the Private Treptow Pledge ? After Pvt. Treptow was killed, a diary was found in which he had inscribed the following pledge: ''America must win this war. Therefore I will work, I will save, I will sacrifice, I will endure, I will fight cheerfully and do my utmost, as if the issue of the whole struggle depended on me alone.''

All Americans should watch this video! Semper Fi Ron

Posted by Steve Reichert on Wednesday, April 16, 2014

THE PLEDGE OF PRIVATE TREPTOW By RICHARD HALLORAN, Special to the New York Times Published: January 21, 1981 FACEBOOK TWITTER GOOGLE+ EMAIL SHARE PRINT REPRINTS WASHINGTON, Jan. 20— Martin A. Treptow, a young and obscure American private killed in France in World War I, was written into American history books by President Reagan today because of a letter Mr. Reagan received from an unidentified admirer. Toward the end of his Inaugural Address, President Reagan spoke of monuments to heroism and, with a struggle to control his voice, drew attention to ''the sloping hills of Arlington National Cemetery with its row upon row of simple white markers.'' ''Under such a marker lies a young man, Martin Treptow, who left his job in a small-town barber shop in 1917 to go to France with the famed Rainbow Division,'' Mr. Reagan said. After Pvt. Treptow was killed, a diary was found in which he had inscribed the following pledge: ''America must win this war. Therefore I will work, I will save, I will sacrifice, I will endure, I will fight cheerfully and do my utmost, as if the issue of the whole struggle depended on me alone.'' Recalling Message of Letter White House officials said that Mr. Reagan, wanting a passage for the address to illuminate his point of heroism, recalled the letter he had received earlier with the reference to Pvt. Treptow. Mr. Reagan's speech writers dug many of the facts about Pvt. Treptow out of the National Archives here and spent a day looking for his grave in Arlington, across the Potomac river. Officials at the cemetery, however, said that Pvt. Treptow was buried in Bloomington, Wis. Further checking by researchers of The New York Times determined that he was buried in Bloomer, Wis., a small town in the northwestern part of the state. White House officials said Mr. Reagan did not mean to imply that the soldier was buried in Arlington. While President Reagan may have turned Pvt. Treptow into a national hero, he was not entirely unknown before today. The American Legion posts in Bloomer, Wis., and Cherokee, Iowa, were named for him. Moreover, it appears that the pledge cited by Mr. Reagan may have been used before by President Wilson and by former Senator Guy Gillette, Democrat of Iowa. Pvt. Treptow was born January 19, 1894, in Chippewa Falls, Wis., near Bloomer, where he grew up. He was working as a barber in Cherokee, Iowa, when the United States entered the war in 1917. There he enlisted in the Iowa National Guard, which became the 168th Infantry Regiment, 84th Brigade, in the 42d ''Rainbow'' Division when it was called to Federal service. Pvt. Treptow was killed while serving as a runner, or courier, for Company M in the battle of the Ourcq River on July 29, 1918.