Photo of the Day: ‘Last Stop USA,’ John F. Kennedy Memorial Park, Piermont NY

“GI Joe,” the waving soldier in this statue in upstate New York’s Rockland County, represented a common figure in World War II: the 1.5 million GIs who, after training at Camp Shank in nearby Orangeburg, would embark from Piermont Pier for the European theater.

Though a half million disembarked at the conclusion of the conflict, all too many others never made it home. It is they, as well as all the others who perished in American wars, that we remember and honor today—and pray that their supreme sacrifice may never be repeated.