Today as we pause to remember the sacrifices and courage of our Pearl Harbor veterans and those we lost 75 years ago, President-Elect Trump announced retired Marine Gen. John F. Kelly as his choice for Department of Homeland Security.

Who is General Kelly? What is it about him that we should know? How about March 2003 while assistant division commander?

Two Marines (they never really retire) by the name of Bing West and Major General Ray “E-Tool” Smith had a chopper ride with him, one that got a little hairy.

After the immediate danger had passed, Smith let off some steam, marveling, “He had us cold. .  .  . It takes skill to miss something this big right in front of you. Thank God for piss poor shooters.”

Responding to his slightly unsettled passengers with the compassion and solicitousness for which Marine generals are famous, the Boston-born Kelly said, “I thought you guys were used to that!”

That, according to many including Kelly himself, was one of the ‘lighter’ moments of the campaign. Through that campaign, the campaigns in Tirkrit, Fallujah, Ramadi, and Anbar (in total three different tours of duty) Kelly stayed humble. The Marines who served with him and those he served with cannot recall any occasion ever that he took credit for himself.

His sons followed in his footsteps. Robert, the oldest, enlisted after graduation and became an infantry officer.

At the height of the fighting in Helmand Province, 2nd Lt. Robert M. Kelly was there as a platoon commander. And then…

Before dawn on November 9, 2010, General Kelly opened the door to his home at the Washington Navy Yard to see Joe Dunford, then serving as the Corps’s assistant commandant, standing on the porch in his service uniform. Robert, said by a Marine who served closely with him to be “just like his father,” someone who “was humble, knew his trade, was physically fit, tough as nails, charismatic, funny,” someone who had “a genuine concern for the well-being of Marines,” had been killed in Sangin.

Notifications of families of Marines killed in action are always done in person, and Dunford had decided to tell Kelly himself. What came next was, if possible, worse—as Kelly later put it to a reporter from the Washington Post, “I then did the most difficult thing I’ve done in my life. I walked upstairs, woke Karen to the news, and broke her heart.”

Can you imagine? I cannot. But I also cannot imagine the fortitude, courage, and sheer strength of will that it took John Kelly to do what he did just four days later. He was slated for a keynote speech in St. Louis, Missouri at a ball celebrating the birthday of the Marine Corps, and kept his promise.

Before he addressed the crowd that had assembled in the St. Louis Hyatt Regency ballroom last November, Lt. Gen. John F. Kelly had one request. “Please don’t mention my son,” he asked the Marine Corps officer introducing him.

His speech is worth watching multiple times. Please read the full text of his speech here.

How he stood up there and delivered that remarkable speech without breaking down, I’ll never know. His story in that speech of two Marine heroes, Corporal Jonathan Yale and Lance Corporal Jordan Haerter, will give you chills. And, I have to believe that this particular portion of his speech is one aspect he will carry with him into the DHS.

As we sit here right now, we should not lose sight of the fact that America is at risk in a way it has never been before. Our enemy fights for an ideology based on an irrational hatred of who we are. Make no mistake about that no matter what certain elements of the “chattering class” relentlessly churn out. We did not start this fight, and it will not end until the extremists understand that we as a people will never lose our faith or our courage.

General Kelly said that in 2010 just four days after his son was killed in Afghanistan. Kelly knows combat, sacrifice, courage, and America. Most importantly, he recognizes the enemy for who they are. A clarity that is sorely needed in this next Administration after what we’ve dealt with for the last eight years.