Faulks, who topped the best seller list and won critical acclaim for his World War I saga Birdsong, won the award for his latest novel Charlotte Gray.

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Winston Churchill contributed to a 1931 collection of essays called "If It Had Happened Otherwise" with an entry envisioning how World War I might have been avoided if the Confederacy had won the Civil War.

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When people ask me if we could have won the war in Vietnam, I say that I was taught that the duty of a Marine is to destroy the will of the enemy to resist the authority of the United States of America.

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And at the base of that statue are words Washington expressed to his friend after the Revolutionary War in America was won -- and I've shared these words with President Sarkozy on one of our visits, so I want to conclude with them this afternoon, because they capture the spirit that we celebrate today.

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