People who have never lived through a catastrophe love to ask why America spends billions of dollars building giant nuclear aircraft carriers. Tell them to ask the mothers of Banda Aceh, Indonesia what they saw on the ocean horizon in January 2005. When the Indian Ocean tsunami killed more than two hundred thousand people, the entire coast of Sumatra was erased. Every bridge, road, and water pipe was gone. Tens of thousands of children were dying of thirst in the mud, and no truck on earth could reach them. Two thousand miles away in Hong Kong, the U.S. aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln was on holiday port call. Within hours of the news, young American sailors walked out of restaurants and hotels, left their vacation behind, ran back up the gangway, and pushed the ship's two nuclear reactors to flank speed. When the Abraham Lincoln dropped anchor off the shattered coast of Aceh, it did not launch a single fighter jet. Instead, the American sailors turned their nuclear warship into the largest floating water factory on earth. Using the ship's four massive steam distillation plants, the crew purified nearly 100,000 gallons of fresh drinking water from the sea every single day. For weeks without sleep, young sailors stood on the hangar deck filling five-gallon plastic jugs by hand, while seventeen Seahawk helicopters flew nonstop from sunrise to sunset. They flew more than 1,500 missions into jungle clearings, delivering over 400,000 gallons of pure water and nearly six million pounds of food and medicine to people of a different faith who had been taught for years to fear the United States. America did not ask for one barrel of oil or one dollar in return. When the local hospitals were running again, the giant gray ship quietly raised its anchor and sailed away. A small mind looks at an American aircraft carrier and sees only a weapon. A survivor looks at that flat gray deck and sees five thousand young Americans bringing water from the sea.

If someone asks you how much a single family's life is worth to the United States Navy, tell them the exact price: ten million dollars of steel. On April 29, 1975, as Saigon fell, a tiny two-seat wooden-and-fabric Cessna plane with almost no fuel left circled desperately above the American aircraft carrier USS Midway. Inside that tiny cockpit, a father named Major Buang-Ly had crammed his wife and five small children, including a baby. He scribbled a note on a map, wrapped it around his pistol so it would not blow into the ocean, and dropped it onto the carrier deck. A young American sailor picked up the crumpled paper and ran it up to Captain Lawrence Chambers. The note read: "Can you move these helicopter to the other side, I can land on your runway, I can fly 1 hour more. Please rescue me. Major Buang, Wife and 5 child." The flight deck of the USS Midway was completely jammed from bow to stern with military helicopters. A Cessna has no tailhook to catch carrier wires, and its pilot had never landed on a ship in his life. By every military regulation, Captain Chambers had been in command for only five weeks. Throwing millions of dollars of U.S. government aircraft into the sea without permission from Washington could end his career in a court-martial. Chambers looked up at the tiny plane circling in the wind with five children inside. He did not call an accountant in Washington. "Clear the deck," the captain ordered. Hundreds of young American sailors in yellow and green jerseys ran to the edge of the ship, put their shoulders against massive Huey helicopters, and shoved ten million dollars worth of machinery straight off the cliff into the South China Sea. Captain Chambers turned the giant carrier into the wind at twenty-five knots. The tiny Cessna came down, bounced once on the steel runway, and rolled to a safe stop with feet to spare. When the cockpit door opened and five small children stepped out onto the deck, three thousand American sailors roared so loud it drowned out the engines, and immediately passed around a hat to collect cash for the family's new life in America. When the math says a child's life is too expensive, an American throws the math into the ocean.

Fifty yards behind U.S. Army Sergeant First Class Paul Ray Smith, one hundred wounded American soldiers were lying on stretchers inside an unarmored medical aid station with only handguns to defend themselves. Coming straight toward them were one hundred Iraqi Republican Guard soldiers armed with rocket-propelled grenades, mortars, and automatic rifles. On April 4, 2003, at Baghdad International Airport, Smith and sixteen soldiers were building a holding pen when the enemy launched a massive ambush from both sides and a watchtower above. Within minutes, the supporting Bradley fighting vehicle ran low on ammunition and took battle damage, and three soldiers inside Smith's M113 armored personnel carrier were badly wounded by gunfire and shrapnel. After dragging the wounded men to safety and throwing a grenade to slow the first wave, Smith saw the enemy flanking the wall toward the medical station. If that wall fell, one hundred helpless wounded Americans would be slaughtered on their stretchers. Why did Smith climb onto the exposed roof of a damaged M113 armored carrier instead of fighting from behind cover? Because on an M113 carrier, the heavy .50-caliber Browning machine gun is mounted externally on top of the hatch. You cannot aim it or reload its ammunition boxes from inside the armor. Even worse, an enemy rocket had set the armored carrier's engine compartment on fire, meaning the vehicle could explode beneath his feet at any second. Smith did not step off that burning vehicle. Ordering a private to back the smoking M113 right into the breach while he stayed in the open turret, Smith grabbed the handles of the .50-caliber machine gun in the direct crossfire of enemy snipers in the watchtower. With flames roaring behind his back and bullets sparking off the aluminum hull, another soldier lying inside passed up three heavy steel boxes of .50-caliber ammunition. Smith fired nearly four hundred rounds, single-handedly breaking the assault and killing up to fifty enemy soldiers before a final bullet struck his neck. Every single one of the one hundred wounded Americans in the aid station lived. He was the first soldier in the Iraq War to be awarded the Medal of Honor. A shield does not move when the fire starts.