Trump Honors a 103-Year-Old Battle of the Bulge Hero and Vows ‘Total Victory’ Over Iran

He was 19 when he left a young wife and a newborn son to go fight in Europe. On Wednesday, at 103, Army Cpl. Wilbur Jackson “Jack” Myers was at Arlington National Cemetery to hear the president of the United States tell his story to the country.

President Trump laid a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, then took the stage for Veterans Day with Vice President JD Vance, War Secretary Pete Hegseth and VA Secretary Doug Collins. He built most of his speech around four veterans in the crowd, from World War II to Afghanistan, and used the rest to make the case that his administration has kept its promises to the people who served.

“A nation without heroes is like a sky without stars or a heaven without angels,” Trump said. “But in America, we’ve never known that darkness because we have the men and women of America’s armed forces, our guiding lights, our greatest heroes, and our guardian angels.”

Four men, four wars

Myers was a gunner in the 692nd Tank Destroyer Battalion and fought in the Battle of the Bulge, the deadliest battle for American forces in the war, The Center Square reported. “For weeks, he and his unit fought in one of the most intense crucibles in the history of war to turn the enemy’s final advance into an unbelievable and somewhat unexpected defeat,” Trump said. Myers’ battalion later helped free prisoners at the Dachau concentration camp.

Next was a Vietnam medevac pilot who flew almost 1,900 combat missions and carried nearly 2,800 badly wounded soldiers out of harm’s way. On one day in December 1968, he flew into machine-gun and sniper fire twice to reach trapped Americans, and he was hit in the leg, hand and eye. “Despite it all, he grabbed the flight stick, recovered the aircraft, and returned the eight men to safety,” Trump said. “Nobody thought it was possible.” He went home with the Distinguished Service Cross, two Distinguished Flying Crosses, a Bronze Star and 33 Air Medals.

The third was an Army Green Beret who was nearly killed by a blast in Afghanistan in 2010. He went through 27 surgeries and his heart stopped twice. Eighteen months later he was back in combat, and he went against orders to rescue soldiers pinned down by Taliban fire. He earned the Silver Star.

The fourth was a Marine who lived through the 1983 bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut, which killed 241 American service members. Trump used that story to talk about Iran. “America did not start a war with Iran. Iran has been waging war on America since 1979,” he said. “This should have been taken care of a long time ago.”

“Not 93 percent victory”

Trump didn’t back off the war. He thanked “every service member currently working to ensure that the world’s number one state sponsor of terror, the Islamic Republic of Iran, will never have a nuclear weapon.”

He told the crowd the United States “won” and that it’s “just a question of when we want to end it,” according to the BBC. And he made clear he isn’t settling for a partial win. The goal is “total victory,” Trump said, “not 93 percent victory,” The Washington Post reported.

He pointed to the military’s work in Iran and Venezuela as proof the country’s standing has turned around. “I would say we are right now more respected than this country has ever been before,” Trump said.

The promise to veterans at home

The other half of the speech was about veterans’ care. Trump said he was proud to have “done more to improve care for America’s veterans than any president in modern history.”

In that stretch he said his administration cut the VA claims backlog by nearly 70%, and he pointed to the VA Home Loan Reform Act he signed so that no veteran loses a home to foreclosure. He also brought up the VA accountability and whistleblower law he signed in 2017, his first year in office, according to One America News.

“America’s veterans have always fulfilled their duty to us, and while I’m president of the United States, we will always fulfill our duty to them,” Trump said.

Collins had his own standout line from the stage. “We do NOT ‘give’ our veterans anything,” he said, per the White House’s own clip. “They have EARNED everything that they have gotten!” In another clip the White House posted Wednesday, he said the VA just put more than $1 billion toward fighting veteran homelessness, and that it permanently housed more than 50,000 veterans last year and is coming close to that number again this year.

Vance’s “send me”

Vance, a Marine Corps veteran, introduced the president. He borrowed from Abraham Lincoln, who compared the aging Revolutionary War veterans of his day to a forest losing its oak trees.

“To our generations who served in the military, our most important monuments are you,” Vance said. “It is the people who had the courage and the willpower and the fight to put on the uniform of the United States of America and say ‘Don’t send my neighbor, send me.’”

That line was the best summary of the day. Not a policy, not a poll, not a fight in Congress. Just a 103-year-old man at Arlington and a president telling the country what he did at 19.

Trump closed the way he started, with the people who wore the uniform. “To inherit a free nation is among the rarest blessings that any people in history have ever known,” he said. “To defend that freedom is among the hardest and highest obligations.” The White House posted the full ceremony on its X account.