"Thank you for your service" - 3rd installment

A gloomy, cold, rainy dawn on Veteran's Day in Jokelahoma. I've already written two blogs on "thank you for your service" and have no wish to post another. I think about my service often, and on this day, which began as a reminder of the date of the cessation of hostilities at the 11th hour of the 11th day of November in 1918 (WW1), I'm especially inclined to look retrospectively on that service. Meanwhile, a day of remembrance of the slaughter during WW1 has evolved into something else.

As noted in my blogs, I have very mixed feelings about my personal service. No gratitude for my Vietnam service was offered to me when I arrived back in the USA in late December of 1970. No one greeted me upon my arrival, but no one hassled me even though I was traveling in my class A dress green uniform. Since then, there has been growing recognition that we can hate the war but that doesn't mean we have to hate the warriors. What I consider to be the elephant in the room is our national neglect of our veterans, especially those who served and suffered from being in combat. Our PotUS clearly doesn't give a damn about the problems of military service veterans.

I can forgo your thanks for my personal service without rancor. Those wishing to thank me for my service should be opposed to unjustified, unnecessary invasions in foreign nations by our military, and be generous contributors to organizations providing support to our veterans. Let us work together to help those veterans in desperate need of our support. To have a national celebration of Veteran's day while many veterans suffer is disgraceful, in my eyes.

I saw something on TV last night ... some sidebar offered this sentiment: "Have a happy Veteran's Day". I consider that to be an obscene lack of respect for veterans and their sacrifices. For many of them, Veteran's Day is not some happy occasion, but rather is a painful reminder of how those who have never served (right now only 1% of Americans have military service) simply can't muster much empathy for people living in cardboard boxes, haunted by PTSD, with broken homes, drug and alcohol addiction, and struggles to overcome what combat has done to them.

 

 Damn! This turned into a "blog" anyway. Sorry, but these are my thoughts on this day. The photo was shot in Dec 1970 outside my home after I arrived back from Vietnam.