Veterans Day, who and where are they...

I studied a bit of history, my mother made me - thanks, Mom! And I know that Veterans Day wasn't always such, it was Armistice Day, when the guns fell silent. The eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month and the guns fell silent. That must have been wonderful and a bit unbelievable for the trench rats and their brethren the mud slogging combatants of the Great War, a perfect peace later ruined by politicians at large elegant tables with papers and punishment and plunder on their minds, such little men.

What I knew of Veterans from my early years was that they were the stuff of legends, they were the backbone of the troop formations and armies that I read about. They were the stiffening and the perfection of deadly thrust and totally unafraid in the face of thousands. I knew about the 300, about Napoleon's Old Guard at Waterloo. All that from the stories, movies and television - boy, did I know veterans and what they were good for. Of course being a Boomer, I was living with a veteran, his Ike jacket hung in his closet with his ribbons and patches on it, there was a Japanese saber, a pistol belt and an M1 bayonet, too. I didn't understand what that meant to him, why The Gallant Men and Combat! , some of my favorite shows, didn't excite him or even entertain him. Being a high school graduate of 1966, I knew the godless Communists were waiting for me in Vietnam, although I did waste a semester in Coral Gables before I went off to become a soldier. My father did tell me that I wouldn't like it as we said good-bye.

So I had to learn to go where I was sent, do what they wanted me to do, to do it well and to understand they would punish me for my failures and foolishness. Although the foolishness was always so much fun, I did have enough pride to really work at war and becoming a soldier.

I guess that I started to consider myself a veteran by the time I was a Drill Sergeant, I had served in Korea, Germany and Vietnam, had bit unfriendly fire in Korea and Vietnam and had done just fine. My father finally talked to me a bit about his war when I came back from Vietnam - he only had Leyete and Okinawa, as a Combat Engineer and a teenager - the year he lost being nineteen. His brother was in Italy and mentioned that he was glad he hadn't earned a bronze arrowhead on his campaign ribbons, that was given to the assault forces, my father had one. Another veteran in my life, my uncle earned a commission in Italy and stayed in the Army through the early Cold War years. I thought he was too tough on his sons, but then he had four of them. My grandfather, the Methodist minister and missionary to El Cerro in Montevideo, he had served in the American forces in France in the Great War, he hadn't served in combat duties since he was a Pacifist but he did serve. He spent most of his life working for International Peace.

My mother is still pushing History at me, yesterday's email:

Remember our ancestor   Jabez
Cleveland  who died in the Battle of Bunker hill. And our other
ancestor  who fought in the Revolutionary war, as a member of the
Virginia Militia, he was an Archer (last name, don't know his first
name).In the Civil War only Don's family fought in it.

Those Civil War veterans were named Bauer,
which in German (where they came from) means farmer or peasant.  Which
gets me to my point about Veterans Day, I have a point, really.

The Veterans that really ought to be thanked, are the ones that went to
battle and came home and built a life away from the terror and turmoil
of combat, that work hard to keep their children and grandchildren from
the fear and outright terror of killing or being killed by other men
trying their best to live through it all and get home to build a
different life. Don't get me wrong, most of them have exactly the same
courage to put on the war gear and go out and face the fury again, but
they also have the discipline to build that better life, the patience
to put up with a little stupidity and discomfort for the future, and
the intelligence to want to have Peace and know when it is time to go
back to War.  And to the unknown woman with daughter and husband that
stopped to tell me that she thanked me for my service in Vietnam, me
the tough guy that couldn't break through the fragile armor that hid my
pain to say anything - I want to say Thank you for that little touch of
kindness, it has always meant so much.  A Nurse and a Marine
are veterans worth reading, but there are thousands of stories out
there, think about the Veterans and those young people in uniform
becoming Veterans as I speak.