Today is Veteran's Day in the U.S.; I know the holiday goes by other names in other parts of the world.
Consider this an open thank you to all veterans. As someone who values my imagination, using it to conjure characters and circumstances both fantastic and terrible, I cannot fathom the real horrors that many veterans have faced in war. From first hand accounts, combat is anything but glorious. War is the ugliest enterprise in which we humans engage. War is something I hope we can eventually wipe from the human experience.
I will always hope for nonviolent solutions to political, religious, and social disagreements, but I until that hope is realized, I thank the men and women who have heeded the call.
I specifically want to thank Captain Shawn Miller, a co-worker and member of the Kansas National Guard. Capt. Miller is returning to work tomorrow after serving a tour in Iraq. I know the students have missed him. Thanks, Captain.
5 comments:
Hear, hear. I concur. Regardless of how one feels about our current deployments, our enlisted folk and officers always deserve our best regards and treatment.
My stepfather informed me that it is also the birthday of the Marine Corp.
This may sound crass, but it's my Veteran's day story for the year. As I was leaving my office last night (in downtown Las Vegas), I spent a minute sitting at Bridger street trying to turn left onto Las Vegas blvd.; walking across the street were two women dressed in formal, low-cut evening gowns. Obviously not unusual here, but they were eye-catchingly beautiful, like the kind of people you only see on television. Tall, shapely, and the kind of bodies that make idiots like me stop paying attention to driving and sit through green lights. Anyway, a young formal-dress Marine came up behind them, took his place in between the two, took one on each arm, and continued to walk up to Fremont street for en evening of God-knows-what. He looked happy.
And I thought: well, there you go. Happy Veteran's Day.
May all of our young men and woman of uniform come back safely so that they may become veterans. Semper Fedelis!
I work with several vets (one ex-marine, one ex-navy, one ex-air force), so for really the first time this year I had vets close by to thank. They spent the day carping about dress uniforms, which was kind of sweet. :)
Ditto ditto twenty times ditto. :)
Jeremy--I bet he did look very happy.
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