This year, as in each of the past four years, my Independence Day experience has been tempered, saddened, because thoughts of the ultimate outdoorsmen and women have been foremost.

Who are these ultimate outdoorsmen? I'll give you a hint. They aren't the guys you see on ESPN on Sunday morning or the buffoons of the Outdoor Channel, but you can see them on television, especially at the end of every edition of the CBS Evening News.

The ultimate outdoorsmen won't be spending their holiday weekend with their cousins, and it isn't likely they will be doing much catfishing. They will be experiencing hot nights and plenty of fireworks.

They descend directly from a ragged bunch of Americans who hiked on bare, bloody feet from Trenton after whacking the British in 1776. They died and baked in the sun at Gettysburg. They died in mud holes filled with mustard gas in the Ardennes. Their brothers broiled at Guadal Canal and froze at Bastogne. They endured at Frozen Chosin in Korea, at Dak To in Vietnam.

This Fourth of July, the ultimate outdoorsmen are spending that most American of all holidays in places like Tora Bora and Ramadi. For some, it will be their last holiday, ever.

Yes, the ultimate outdoorsmen and women are soldiers. Who else lives for months, years at a time in a tent or a hole in the ground, eats when and what they can and love their rifles as they would a sister? They are soldiers, especially the infantry, the "grunts" of the U.S. Army and U.S. Marine Corps. They were the kids you knew in high school.

As of last year, there were 16 combat veterans in the U.S. House of Representatives, nine Democrats and seven Republicans. There were eight combat vets in the U.S. Senate, four from each party. This is the lowest percentage of combat veterans, ever, in Congress. These are the people who have spent over $219 billion, to date, to send our soldiers to die.

So I long now for George Washington, who not only served, but led men into battle, exposed himself to enemy fire and risked his life time and again. He had holes shot in his clothes, dodged cannonballs. The real G. W. never wasted his soldiers, because he was one of them. The real G.W. actually loved his soldiers and saw them as independent free men who volunteered their lives for the cause of independence, not as pawns to be sacrificed to political and corporate greed.

All the ultimate outdoorsmen have ever asked is what they came to expect from Washington: Not to be wasted by fools and scoundrels. It hasn't worked out that way lately.

On this Fourth of July, I pledge my allegiance to these soldiers, forever and always. If we can get the corporate stooges in Washington to do the same, maybe I can take a few of 'em catfishing down on White River next Fourth of July.