Veterans Day 2024: Meet Five Inspirational Vets
Veterans Day honors all Americans who have served our country in uniform.
U.S. Marines salute the American flag during a Veterans Day ceremony held at James B. Rolle Elementary School in Yuma, Arizona, on November 4, 2024.
Today is Veterans Day, when Americans come together to honor all who have bravely and proudly worn our nation’s uniform. For generations, these extraordinary men and women have shouldered our nation’s heaviest burden: keeping our country and the world safe from evil, tyranny and oppression.
For 15 years, I have had the honor and privilege of writing about hundreds of fallen heroes, veterans and military families that stepped forward to serve after America was attacked on September 11, 2001. While there are many heroes to honor who served long before 9/11, I believe it’s crucial to help tell these remarkable modern stories of sacrifice so that future generations can be galvanized by their selfless courage.
Here are five veterans who I have been blessed to write about and in some cases, work alongside. I hope their stories inspire you.
Beau Wise
It’s hard to imagine what Beau Wise and his family went through. Like his two big brothers, Jeremy and Ben, Beau volunteered to serve and deployed to Afghanistan. During his first combat tour as a U.S. Marine, he received the heartbreaking news that his oldest brother Jeremy, a former Navy SEAL who went to Afghanistan as a CIA contractor on a mission directly tied to the hunt for Osama bin Laden, was killed in an al-Qaeda suicide bombing.
After burying their big brother, Beau and Ben continued serving our country. Less than three years after Jeremy’s ultimate sacrifice, Ben was also killed in Afghanistan while fighting the Taliban with his Special Forces unit. Tragically and unthinkably, Beau lost both his brothers and was barred from further combat service under the same Pentagon policy so memorably depicted in the film “Saving Private Ryan.”
In 2021, Beau and I wrote a book about his harrowing experience called Three Wise Men. Today, Beau is working for the Tunnel to Towers Foundation to help not only fellow Gold Star families like his, but loved ones of fallen firefighters, police officers and first responders. He also helps fellow veterans. Even after already giving so much, Beau still wants to give back.
Megan McClung
“Be bold. Be brief. Be gone.” The moving words of Maj. Megan McClung, etched for eternity on her headstone at Arlington National Cemetery, have inspired countless young women to live consequential lives and make the most of the short time all of us have on earth.
Megan should be enjoying this Veterans Day with her family, friends and fellow vets. Instead, she chose to risk her life in one of the most dangerous places in the world in 2006: Iraq’s volatile Anbar Province. From high school all the way until the tragic moment an enemy improvised explosive device (IED) took her life, she overcame countless obstacles to become a Marine. When Megan made the ultimate sacrifice, she became the highest-ranking female Marine officer killed in the Iraq war and the first female Naval Academy graduate in American history to be killed in combat.
My 2022 book Be Bold recounts Megan’s extraordinary life and legacy. She truly embodied her stirring words.
Flo Groberg
Captain Florent Groberg only had a few seconds to make the most important of decisions. Was he willing to trade his own life to save his friends? It’s a choice very few are ever forced to make.
Flo never hesitated. As a man who he believed might be a suicide bomber moved toward his patrol, Flo rushed to confront him and start pushing the suspected terrorist as far away as possible from his team. After eight agonizing seconds, the man ignited his suicide vest.
What mattered most to Flo in the confusing and chaotic aftermath wasn’t his own injuries, which were substantial, but the condition of his teammates. Sadly, four were killed: U.S. Army Command Sgt. Maj. Kevin Griffin, Maj. Thomas Kennedy, U.S. Air Force Maj. David Gray and USAID Foreign Service Officer Ragaei Abdelfattah. There were more than a dozen injuries, but were it not for Flo’s act of heroism, the explosion’s death toll would have been catastrophic.
Since being awarded the Medal of Honor by President Obama and retiring from the Army, Flo has had many successes in the private sector. At the same time, he is relentlessly committed to honoring his fallen friends, giving inspirational speeches and writing op-eds like this one that appeared in The Atlantic on Election Day. It stresses our common bond as Americans and the need for national unity.
In 2017, Flo and I wrote a book called 8 Seconds of Courage, which is about far more than the title suggests. I hope you will read about Flo’s journey to becoming an American hero and the importance of keeping the memory of America’s fallen warriors alive. It’s a fitting read for Veterans Day.
Jennifer Ballou
When a U.S. service member is killed in action, their next of kin is notified with a solemn knock on the door by uniformed military personnel. Gold Star wife Jennifer Ballou’s experience, tragically, was much different. When her husband made the ultimate sacrifice, she was serving in Afghanistan, too.
After a gut-wrenching flight south from her base to a military hospital after being informed her husband had been seriously injured, Jennifer learned that he had not survived. Staff Sgt. Eddie Loredo had been killed by an enemy improvised explosive device, and it would be her responsibility to fly home beside her husband’s flag-draped casket and deliver the awful news to her children.
Despite her own grief, Jennifer went on to help lead an Army program to assist Gold Star families and veterans heal and find resilience. After retiring, she began looking for other ways to help those in need. She ultimately joined the Global War on Terrorism Memorial Foundation, which is building a permanent monument to post-9/11 heroes on the National Mall in our nation’s capital.
Jennifer and I are currently working on a book together that will be published in 2026. It is a privilege to know such a courageous woman, whose incredible story defines the meaning of Veterans Day.
Michael Ollis
Michael Ollis was sitting in his middle school classroom when his city and our country were attacked by terrorists on 9/11. From the moment the World Trade Center collapsed just miles from his school, Michael resolved to never let anything similar happen on American soil again.
As he served his third combat deployment, Staff Sgt. Ollis encountered a Polish Army soldier on the battlefield in Afghanistan. Their shared base was under attack and the Polish soldier had been wounded. Despite a language barrier, Lt. Karol Cierpica made eye contact with Michael, who he believed was trying to say “I have your back.” A few minutes later, that’s exactly what Michael did. He stepped between the Polish soldier and a suicide bomber, who blew himself up and took Michael’s life at the age of 24.
My book about Michael, I Have Your Back, came out earlier this year. As we observe Veterans Day and thank all who have defended our nation, I think what the Polish soldier believes his American counterpart was trying to tell him is a perfect summation of our veterans and the entire military community. No matter the threat or the fierceness of America’s adversaries, they’ve always had our backs and always will. We cannot thank them enough for having been willing to wear our nation’s uniform and risk everything to keep us safe.
May God bless our nation’s veterans and their loved ones. You are the very best of our great country.
Tom Sileo is a contributing senior editor of The Stream. He is the author of I Have Your Back, Be Bold and co-author of Three Wise Men, Brothers Forever, 8 Seconds of Courage and Fire in My Eyes. Follow Tom on X @TSileo and The Stream at @Streamdotorg.