In the News

The phrase “freedom is not free” reverberated several times at Amesbury Middle School as more than 100 people gathered outside the Main Street school Monday morning for the city’s annual Veterans Day ceremony.

The phrase was spoken repeatedly by guest speaker and Iraq War veteran John Clifford of Newburyport. Clifford joined the Marine Corps in 2000 and fought for his country in Fallujah, Iraq. It was at Fallujah that he was wounded while riding in a Humvee and later awarded the Purple Heart.

A federal project to dredge Gloucester’s Annisquam River will be able to move forward after the state recently awarded a $2.4 million grant to support the work.

The US Army Corps Engineers earlier this year budgeted $5.7 million for the project. But bids came in significantly higher than that amount. The state grant will fill the gap, allowing the contract to be awarded, and the work to get underway this season according to Jim Destino, Gloucester’s chief administrative officer.

Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.), a four-tour veteran of the Iraq War, has dropped out of the presidential race. But, while campaigning, he pledged to expunge the records of men and women dishonorably discharged for serving in the military as homosexuals.

Some of these gay and lesbian military officers and enlisted persons were "discovered," or hunted down, during the time of the soul-grating "Don’t ask, don’t tell" law, hatched by the moral-triangulating of the Clinton administration. Scores of thousands of other discharges occurred before DADT came into force.

PEABODY — U.S. Rep. Seth Moulton, who served four tours in the Iraq War as an Marine Corps infantry officer, led off his fifth annual Veterans Town Hall in an attempt to bridge the gap between those who served and those who did not.

Moulton, who lives in Salem, said people come up to him every day asking him to do more for veterans.

DANVERS — On Monday morning, Robert H. Roy, a disabled Vietnam combat veteran, told the large crowd gathered inside Thorpe Elementary School how this year marks the 100th anniversary of Veterans Day.

Roy, a native of Salem and a longtime Danvers resident, served with NMCB 58, the naval mobile construction battalion known as the “Seabees.” He was selected as this year’s guest speaker during the town’s annual Veterans Day ceremony hosted by the Danvers Veterans Council.

The giant dredge that will return the Annisquam River to safe navigability is expected to arrive in Gloucester next week, and the project, which has had more twists and turns than the ancient river itself, physically will begin in earnest.

On Friday, officials came from near and far, and from the varying strata of government, to the Coast Guard’s Station Gloucester on Harbor Loop to celebrate the onset of the $7.85 million project that will remove about 140,000 cubic yards of sand and bring new life to the Annisquam.

For nearly a decade, Iraqi citizens worked side by side with US military forces, diplomats, contractors. They were the translators, the cooks and drivers, the aides who helped guide and explain their culture. They were a critical part of the US effort — and now they have been virtually abandoned.

IPSWICH — Congressman Seth Moulton remembers not knowing anything about composting, going to school one day in Marblehead, where he grew up, learning about composting and coming home and telling his parents, “We’re going to compost.”

And they did.

The story was part of an hour-long give and take between the Sixth District Congressman and a mix of middle school and high school students at the Dolan Performing Arts Center, Monday, Nov. 4, at the high-middle school.