President Joe Biden said America’s veterans are �the steel spine of this nation� as he marked Veterans Day during a visit to Arlington National Cemetery.

In remarks at the Memorial Amphitheater, the commander in chief recounted famous battles fought by U.S. troops and said those deployments of soldiers are �linked in a chain of honor that stretches back to our founding days. Each one bound by a sacred oath to support and defend. Not a place, not a person, not a president, but an idea, to defend an idea unlike any other in human history. That idea is the United States of America.�

Nov. 11, once known as Armistice Day, is the anniversary of the armistice that ended World War I in 1918. Biden said that was �unlike any war the world had ever seen before.�

The ceremony was personal for Biden and first lady Jill Biden.

Biden�s son Beau enlisted in 2003 in the Delaware Army National Guard and deployed to Iraq in 2008 for a year as a member of the 261st Theater Tactical Signal Brigade. A captain, he earned the Legion of Merit and Bronze Star. Beau Biden later served two terms as the state’s attorney general. He died in 2015 of brain cancer.

�We miss him,� the president told the crowd, recounting how he pinned the bars on his son on the day he joined the National Guard.

�We come together today to once again honor the generations of Americans who stood on the front lines of freedom. To once again bear witness to the great deeds of a noble few who risked everything, everything, to give us a better future,” he said, paying tribute to �those who have always, always kept the light of shining bright across the world.�

Biden said that as commander in chief, “I have no higher honor. As the father of a son who served, I have no greater privilege.��

He said that �our veterans are the steel spine of this nation and their families, like so many of you, are the courageous heart.�

(AP)