1/30/2008 8:00:00 AM Coast-to-Coast Bus Tour by War Heroes

“His face goes slack. His right hand slips from my hair. It hangs in the air for a moment, then with one last spasm of strength, he brings it to my cheek. It lingers there, and as I look into his dying eyes, he caresses the side of my face.”

                                            --David Bellavia, House-to-House: An Epic Memoir of War

Few people know the cost of combat better than Congressional Medal-of-Honor nominee, Silver Star and Bronze Star-winner, and former Army Staff Sergeant David Bellavia.

Fewer still are willing to talk about it.

Yet, despite enduring unspeakable terrors and losing some of his closest friends in the Battle of Fallujah, one of the deadliest offensives of the Iraq campaign, Bellavia is not one to hold back the memories, or mince words when it comes to his vision of the future in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“We need to ensure that we provide our brave troops with the tools and support they need to complete the missions in both Afghanistan and Iraq,” said Bellavia. “A withdrawal now would not only betray the ultimate sacrifice made by the platoon members I left behind in the desert, and sacrifices by Iraqi innocents, it would abandon a core principle that has made our country great—follow-through.”

“We are a nation that does not give up at the halfway point,” said Army Captain Peter Hegseth, executive director of Vets for Freedom, a non-partisan, non-profit group co-founded by Bellavia and other veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns. “And with reports of civilian casualties dropping some 75 percent in Baghdad and overall attacks falling by more than half, we shouldn’t.”

Armed with statistics, and personal stories from the front lines, Vets for Freedom has launched a “thank-you” bus tour that is traveling across the nation to personally thank veterans, vets’ families, and their supporters for sticking to their convictions and remaining committed to completing the missions at hand. Vets for Freedom has 44 chapters and 20,000 members, and is growing daily.

Bellavia is one of a rotating-group of four, highly-decorated veterans who are carrying that message to stops in 15 states, meeting with both young and old at a variety of school and community-oriented events.

Other veterans sharing their compelling stories are; a sole survivor of a mission in which four Navy SEALS were sent into a Taliban stronghold on the Afghan-Pakistan border—he was the only one to make it out, dragging, his bloody and bruised body through the mountains to safety; a former Los Angeles-gang member who joined the Marine Corps to straighten out his life and ended up receiving a Silver Star for heroic action on the battlefield in Iraq; and a former lieutenant colonel who was instrumental in the search and capture of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

The National Heroes Tour will kick off March 14th in San Diego and is rolling cross-country for three weeks, on its way to Washington, D.C., for an event and then for a tour finale in New York, N.Y.

More information can be found at www.vetsforfreedom.org/heroestour