As their role in helping to preserve America’s freedom is being fully recognized, it is only now that these men are embraced by the public as true American heroes.
It’s frightening to see how readily “price of freedom” is associated with war.
The Smithsonian even created an exhibit based on that weird conflation of terms: The Price of Freedom: Americans at War

A Less Popular Perspective on the Price of Freedom
Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty—power is ever stealing from the many to the few…. The hand entrusted with power becomes … the necessary enemy of the people. Only by continual oversight can the democrat in office be prevented from hardening into a despot: only by unintermitted Agitation can a people be kept sufficiently awake to principle not to let liberty be smothered in material prosperity.
via 1073. Wendell Phillips (1811-84). Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations. 1989.