Did you Hug a Vet Yesterday?
Don’t worry it’s not to late to thank them for their service, you don’t need to wait for a holiday to do so you should let them know their sacrifice wasn’t in vain and that you are glad they fought their country.
Be it Armistice Day, Remembrance Day, or Veterans Day, maybe even Independence Day for the people of Poland, November 11th is the day when the guns fell silent over Europe ending the First World War. 90 years have passed since that day, 90 years just think about that for a moment, I have one living family member over age 90 and she would have only just been a baby at war’s end, thousands of miles away from her family’s homeland of Poland that had been the prime battle ground of the Eastern Front. 90 years, in that span we went from the industrial age to the digital one, went from simple bi-planes to walking on our moon, we broke the code of our own DNA and even after ages of racism we elected a black man to the office of President of the United States.
90 years ago i don’t think anyone could have seen what was to come, people at large where just coming to terms with the idea of leaving the farm and living in cities. According to the new there is one remaining American Vet from WWI still alive today, oh the things he must have seen in his life. The conversion of the American Republic from a nation of Farmers to the industrial juggernaught it became in the middle of the last century to the digital root* it is today. The sorrow that just 20 years after he and his brethren fought that Europe would fall into an even worse war where the darkest aspects of the human soul would come to light.
That war, the Second World War would be a truely world wide war with combat on just about ever continent except the Antarctic. Nearly 65 Million People would lose their lives in the madness of that war. Or about 1/6th the population of the Republic today, or maybe better saying about the same amount of people who voted for Barack Obama for president. From late 1938 till 1945 really a fairly short span when one looks at how long it takes people to reach that type of population.
My grandfather and many of my ‘great’-uncles served in the Second World war, i don’t know if they killed, and really do not care, war turns the people on all sides into monsters and only by the following peace is humanity restored. That Generation as one famous news man calls them the “Greatest Generation” left home to fight, my grandfather lying saying he was drafted inspite of his skilled labor job exempting him from the draft since such work could be more important at home, yet like so many he left home to fight for his country, a nation that his family, my family had only lived in for just over a generation. Then a war won, the guns once more slient in 1945, silenced by the roar of the atom bomb, they returned home and back to normal lives, they went back to being Fathers and Mothers, Laborers and Office workers, they returned to keep building the nation they had cast blood and tears for.
Now my grandfather never talked about war to my mother or uncle,, in fact he didn’t even talk about his service until i was born. Note the wording, he’s never really told me about the war either, rather telling me about his time in the Sevice of the US Navy in the from 43 till the start of 46 when he returned home just after new years to late to see Christmas tree but at that point he was home. He told me about his time with his fellow servicemen, the times they had in the interludes, never about combat beyond telling me he was a gunner on his LST, and that always is followed by a story about an accident his loader had durrng a drill. It was never about the war but about Servicing . Where some fathers and grandfathers filled their kid’s heads with images of glory and victory, he talked about what he did not what the military did, thinking about it now that silent service, that lack of glory might be why i get so anal about duty and oaths, and what is right.
Other wars would follow, one to many if you ask someone like me, and each time men and more and more so women would answer the call to serve.
Service, is to be admired, not medals awarded to battles fought, the simple act of service. The greatest act is the service that requires on give their life in the end, as many medal of honor holders will say the “Real heros are the ones who didn’t come back” they just might be right. But that doesn’t mean we should give everyone who served a hug and thank them for what they did, be it today or 90 years ago, it won’t be over till the last man comes home, till we decided that now their service is to build the country as our great geneation did 60 years ago.
Hug a Vet, even if it isn’t an offical day, they still served then reguardless of what time it is now.
-Gabe
Tags: History
November 12th, 2008 at 1:46 pm
This is really great. Well written! Makes me see your grandpa in a new light. Your uncle has only ever said that he was a cook in the Navy. Never knew that your grandpa was a gunner. Holy Crap!