American Valor Quarterly Issue 9 - Summer 2012 | Page 5

The keynote speaker of the 14th Annual Conference was
United States Marine Corps General James Mattis, currently
commander of CENTCOM, which oversees operations from
the Middle East to Central Asia, including those in Afghanistan
and the recently concluded war in Iraq. He met with many of
the ROTC and service academy students prior to his remarks,
which were carried live on C-SPAN.
"I turn down about 98 percent of these requests,” General
Mattis said to the audience of students and veterans, “But to
connect veterans to the young people who are going to carry
on this experiment you and I call America is very, very important."

Pictured right, and speaking to a full house at the U.S.
Navy Memorial are World War II veterans Colonel Ed
Shames and Major Norm Hatch. Colonel Shames, a
paratrooper in the 101st Airborne during World War II,
served as a platoon leader with the famed “Band of
Brothers.”
Meanwhile, Major Hatch served as a Marine Corps
combat cinematographer on Tarawa and Iwo Jima, with
his documentary short “With the Marines at Tarawa”
winning an Academy Award in 1944. The discussion was
moderated by Colonel Bob Patrick, Director of the
Veterans History Project at the Library of Congress. The
American Veterans Center and World War II Veterans
Committee is proud to partner with the Library of
Congress, submitting all recordings of our documentary
pieces