Veterans Day

Pause…. Take a deep breath today for the men and women who put a thorn in the hand of fascism during WWII. Take another deep breath for our fathers, uncles, aunts, brothers and sisters... high school pals and so on, who have stood ground in faraway places on our behalf. They didn’t stand for a piece of dirt: they stood, whether they knew it or not, for us and our values.

When I came back from four years of service during the conflict in Vietnam, I complained to my dad, “At least your war was justified and you took out Hitler.”

His answer bothered me greatly at the time. He said he knew nothing of Hitler. He joined the army during the depression and the army was a job. After working in the CCC he was glad to be getting a check ($25 a month to start, I believe).

I do know he learned of Hitler. I remembered a tall German Pretzel can full of Reich Marks and medals. In that can was one more thing… a photograph of a pile of corpses, stacked like firewood. It was Buchenwald. He said he learned of Hitler there as the troops ushered the town’s people through that camp.

My dad came home and worked hard to make a good life for his family. He never complained or rarely spoke of the war at all. His Eisenhower jacket (with medals and a 3rd Army patch) and an occasional reminiscence with his hunting buddies at the campfire was all there was.

Though Veterans Day is a holiday, it isn’t a holiday in the usual sense in that it is a day of respect. Respect for those who stand, or stood, in faraway places like the Ardennes Forest like my dad. My generation did the same in the rice paddies of Southeast Asia and our present generation is mired in Iraq and Iran. Today, we honor those who didn’t come back for whatever reason.

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