You know in my business, I'm often in settings where they talk about stars. I’m seldom in a setting with so many stars, that have been earned, not just assigned to them by some gossip columnist, and it’s a rare honor and a great privilege for me to be with all of you tonight here on the dais and in this great auditorium.

So many people have come up to me to say, on this occasion and others, I love your book. When I set out to write it, I had no idea of the richness of the journey that I was about to embark on. It really began on the 40th anniversary of D-Day, when I went to Normandy for a week to do a documentary about that momentous military landing that really changed the course of history. I thought, we’ll have a good time, we’ll drink some wine, and maybe we’ll drink a lot of wine, and we’ll have some good meals, and we’ll hear some war stories.

And on the first day of filming, I walked down to the beach, with two men from Big Red One, one of whom went on to earn the Medal of Honor later. One was without legs that he lost in later action. And as I looked at them, I realized that Harry Garton and Gino Merli were the kinds of people that I had known all my life. They were my schoolteachers and ministers, the businessmen for whom I worked. Their wives looked like the mothers of all my friends; they looked like my parents’ best friends. They were there in their windbreakers, and as we walked onto Omaha Beach, they paused at their first return and began very softly to remember what it had been like that day.

And within about 20 minutes, I had undergone a transformational experience, the likes of which I had not known as a professional journalist. And their stories, and the stories that I began to collect after that, resonated not just with me, but with this country in a way that I could not have anticipated. Now there have been some who have challenged my declaration that this was the greatest generation. My answer to them is, that’s my story, and I'm sticking to it.

But I believe the generation that came of age in the Great Depression, when life was about sacrifice and deprivation, about dropping out of school, not to buy a video game or a car for yourself, but to put food on the table, when sharing meant sharing a pair of shoes or a shirt or a jacket. They didn’t double date, they went three and four couples to a car, to a movie that cost a dime, and went back to someone’s home at the end of the night to play the piano, and have coffee and cake.

And they never gave up on their country, even though times were difficult, and just when they were beginning to emerge from those dark days economically, this country summoned them to distant battlefields, across the Atlantic and across the Pacific. And what the British military historian John Keegan has called the greatest single event in the history of mankind – World War II. They fought on six of the seven continents, all the skies, and on all the seas and beneath them as well, and won. Fifty million people had perished, and nations had been realigned, and we were forced to face harsh truths about the cruelties of mankind in the middle of the 20th century.

But they came home from all of that, and they gave us new art and new science and new industry. A number of them continued in the military. Those who did not, did not just lay down their arms and say I've done by share. They went back to their hometowns and their states, and they ran for mayor and the school board and for the church board trustees. They ran for Senator and for Congress, and they ran for President of the United States, and they took their place in the front ranks of public service.

And no one represented their leadership more profoundly, I believe, than the man that you honor here tonight – George Marshall – who I believe is the most single, underappreciated 20th century American, and one of the most underappreciated Americans of all time.

A warrior, a diplomat, and a visionary. And so I am deeply humbled by this award. And for those of you who only know it from one side of the television screen, not the other, let me just confirm what you're thinking – it’s not easy for an anchorman to express humility. Let me also say that I'm very pleasantly surprised to know that I'm the first journalist to receive this award.

I have some good news and some bad news for you. Journalists and warriors come from the same DNA. I said this first at the War College, and I thought that the colonels in the audience were going to storm the stage. We like unconventional lives. We can deal with authority, but we know when to bristle about authority. We like living off the land. We like catching the bad guys and holding them up for appropriate punishment. And most of all, we’re patriots, who love our country. And the definition of patriotism for me is love your country and always know that it can be better, and that it is the obligation of every citizen to try to make it better, every day.

On these occasions, I like to remind people that I've had the privilege in the last two years, three years especially, of working side by side, night after night, day after day, both in this country and abroad, with three of your best – General Wayne Downing, who is here tonight, General Monty Meigs and General Barry McCaffrey. And I must say as a full blown civilian, it gave me a certain amount of pleasure to say to these four stars, okay men, listen up. We’re coming out in 30 seconds, we’ve got a minute 30 to go – McCaffrey, don’t do all the talking, let Meigs in on this for awhile.

And they were thoroughly professional, and it was not only a joy for me to work with them side by side, but it was a great service to this country to have their expertise and their candor and their truth-telling, as the war went on in the early stages, and then after that.

Now it is sometimes an adjustment. During Operation Desert Storm, I was joined at the desk at NBC, night after night, hour after hour, by one of your great, great figures, the late Colonel Harry Summers, who was a real expert on infantry tactics, a plainspoken man, who kept his military bearing even in a television studio. But about the fifth night of the war, at about three o'clock in the morning, we were kind of operating on fumes at this point, and I refuse on those occasions to have a conventional meal; I said just keep sending out plates of fresh food of some kind, that will keep me going; I don't want to get bogged down with dinner; I've got too many other things to worry about.

And finally about the 18th little dish of chopped fruit arrived on my desk, and I couldn’t even bear to look at it, and I finally slid it across to Harry Summers. He looked down at it for a long moment and he said, “I don't know what's happened to me. First I let them put hairspray and makeup on me – now I'm eating fresh fruit.” But we found a way to get along.

Let me just take a little bit of your time, if I can, to offer some adjurations on the profession that brings you here tonight and our collective place in this society. A few months ago, at a conference of billionaires, moguls, titans, movers and shakers, Monty Meigs arranged for a panel of US Army battalion commanders from Iraq and Afghanistan to present their view of what is happening in their sectors.

It was a dazzling performance by these best and brightest lieutenant colonels. They were energetic, they were articulate, funny, and fully at ease in a roomful of folks who represented a slightly higher pay grade than they did.

They complained, mildly, that their good works and accomplishments had not received enough press attention, and then they engaged in a friendly but pointed exchange with three of us who represented the media at that conference.

Their performance and their bearing represented what I have been encountering for some time in my dealings with the American military in distant battlefields and military bases in this country, away from the constraints of the Pentagon.

The other guests, who represented enormous financial, industrial, social and political strength and power in America, were bedazzled to the point of full immersion infatuation. They rushed to the stage to express their enthusiasm for what they had just heard. They turned to me, and to Tom Friedman of The New York Times and Donald Graham, the publisher of The Washington Post, demanding to know why they had not heard these stories before, why they had not read of the brilliance and the character of line officers in the field.

That night at dinner these four lieutenant colonels were rock stars among groupies, as everyone from Bill Gates at Microsoft and Warren Buffet and Phil Knight of Nike gathered around to continue their adulation, to suggest lecture tours across America, to participate in corporate motivation sessions and to commiserate with them as well about the absence of press coverage.

I was at once amused and determined to use this as an opening to address what I believe is a growing problem in American life. The next day it turns out that I was the guest, the sole interview before the same collection of powerful elites. And I took that opportunity to remind the audience that what they heard the day before, had been, in fact, widely reported, often at great risk – day in and day out – for three years on all the print and electronic news outlets. Perhaps not exactly as the young officers would have liked, but reported nonetheless. And even the officers gave me a sly smile and said you're right on that.

Moreover, for those in the audience who believed that these young battalion commanders were some kind of an elite all-star team handpicked by the Pentagon, I was happy to correct that impression. I told that gathering of moguls and titans, I've met hundreds more like them. They are exceptional officers, but they're not the exception.

Furthermore what they're doing in their commands in Iraq and Afghanistan may be news to you, but it’s not news to communities and neighbors of mine in Big Timber, Montana, or in hamlets in South Carolina, or barrios in East Los Angeles or the working class neighborhoods of Detroit, or the small towns of the Great Plains. In those communities, they pay attention, because it is their sons and daughters, and fathers and mothers, who are in harm’s way in those distant places.

General Meigs performed an important public service that week in Sun Valley by reminding that audience of the place of the military, not just in our national security considerations, but also in our social and political construct as a nation. Indisputably, this country has the finest military in the history of mankind.

It is a superior force at every measurable level, made up entirely by volunteers, fully integrated ethnically and in terms of gender.

Unfortunately, it’s also a military that in too many families, in too many communities and especially in too many corporate suites and boardrooms, country clubs and other gathering places for the elite, it is a military that is out of sight and out of mind. It is separate and distinct from the day-to-day concerns of too many Americans, especially to the elites with their hands on the power. That’s not just inappropriate; it is unacceptable and even dangerous to a democratic society.

One of the enduring lessons I have learned from my interest in and association with what I call the greatest generation, is the long-term beneficial effect of an organic relationship between a civilian society and its military.

World War II was obviously a unique undertaking, requiring millions of people in uniform, a re-ordering its civilian priorities and common sacrifices for a common commitment.

I have come to believe that one of the unheralded dividends at the end of the war for America was the maturation, the discipline, the ethos of teamwork young men and women in their 20s brought back to their civilian lives.

Now young Americans who are not in uniform like to say, they're “finding themselves” in their 20s, or they're “exploring other options” in life. The greatest generation found themselves in distant battlefields or in great sea battles, or in dogfights in the air – they found themselves on factory floors or in shipyards, in the daily rationing of meat and gasoline and luxury items.

What they learned in those life-altering experiences, they applied to the building of this country, to the expansion of freedom, and most of all, to the ordering of priority for the common good. And because their experience had been so shared at every level, there was a common appreciation of the place of the military. Now we ask too few sacrifices at the civilian level.

There are the yellow ribbons and the welcome home signs, but for too many Americans those are more ornamental than organic to their own daily lives.

A distinguished American historian wrote recently of our mercenary military conjuring up images of young warriors who are motivated only by paychecks, in effect, contract killers. That’s a profoundly erroneous conclusion. It is more widely shared, however, than we may care to acknowledge.

So who’s to blame for this schism in our national definition? Ladies and gentlemen I would suggest that we all are.

Our political leaders in both parties are not sufficiently addressing the gap with their constituents. They’re not asking their constituents to make even token sacrifices, as a reminder that there is a war underway. They’re not encouraging their financial patrons – the special interests that help elect them to office – to take a more active role in implementing a better understanding of the place of the military in our lives and in the world.

Now it’s just as well that our military establishment needs to no longer confine itself, by-and-large, to its own culture. It no longer should be as defensive as it can be, when it finds itself under fire.

The media have been too focused on the triumphs and shortcomings on the battlefield, too unimaginative in dealing with the complexities of the military/political structure, as well as the manpower, the financial and the policy issues.

No institution in America is as representative of this great immigrant nation with all our varied parts as the military, and we need to be reminded of that on a daily basis.

Too many citizens are willing to assume that defending the country is an assignment best left to someone else, that it’s not a personal or family obligation or calling. In the modern culture there are too few people around to challenge that.

No one wants to return to a World War to reclaim a continuing relationship between the civilian population and the military. But neither is it in our national interest to have two populations – one in uniform and one not – with little or no connectivity.

The greatest accomplishment of the greatest generation was not just on the battlefield. It was in the post-war continuation of a commitment to a whole nation, civilian and military, each respectful and mindful of their relationship and role assigned them in advancing the national interests.

It is time for a new generation to re-activate that greatness – in uniform and out.

Then perhaps, when my great, great granddaughter is ready to write her book about our generation, she will be able to say, “They, too, met the test.”