Veteran’s Day 2004
There are a small handful of times
during the year when I switch to a serious topic.
Veteran’s day is one of those occasions that is very
important to me. In the United States, Veteran’s Day is
Tuesday, November 11th (this is also Remembrance Day in
Canada). In the early 1970’s, Veteran’s Day became a
“movable” holiday – the fourth Monday of October. In
1978, at the urging of veteran’s groups who realized the
sanctity of the date, Congress retuned Veteran’s Day to
November 11th. Please remember that this day
is not to honor war, but rather to honor the sacrifice
made by others for our freedom.
What we call Veteran’s Day is the
anniversary of the signing of the Armistice in the
Forest of Campiegne by the Allies and the Germans in
1918 (the 11th hour of the 11th
day of the 11th month). This signified the
end of World War I and was originally known as Armistice
Day. President Woodrow Wilson signed the Congressional
Resolution on Nov. 11, 1919, the first Armistice Day.
However, after World War II, the day
began to lose meaning and since there were many other
veterans to consider, the decision was made to change
November 11th to honor all those who fought
in American wars. The United States Congress passed an
act to change the name to Veteran’s Day and in 1954
President Dwight Eisenhower signed the act.
With that in mind, I would like to
say “thank you” to all the men and women and to
especially remember those who aren’t with us anymore
WHAT IS A VETERAN?
Some veterans bear visible signs of
their service: a missing limb, a jagged scar, a certain
look in the eye. Others may carry the evidence inside
them, a pin holding a bone together, a piece of shrapnel
in the leg – or perhaps another sort of inner steel: the
soul’s ally forged in the refinery of adversity.
Except in parades, however, the men
and women who have kept America safe wear no badge or
emblem. You can’t tell a vet just by looking. What is a
vet?
A vet is the cop on the beat who
spent six months in Saudi Arabia sweating two gallons a
day making sure the armored personnel carriers didn’t
run out of fuel.
A vet is the barroom loudmouth,
dumber than five wooden planks, whose overgrown frat-boy
behavior is outweighed by a hundred times in the cosmic
scales by four hours of exquisite bravery near the
38th Parallel.
A vet is the nurse who fought against
futility and went to sleep sobbing every night for two
solid years in Da Nang.
A vet is the POW who went away one
person and came back another – or didn’t come back at
all.
A vet is the drill instructor who has
never seen combat – but has saved countless lives by
turning slouchy, no-account punks and gang members into
marines, airmen, sailors, soldiers and coast guardsmen,
and teaching them to watch each other’s back.
A vet is the parade-riding
Legionnaire who pins on his ribbons and medals with a
prosthetic hand.
A vet is the career quartermaster who
watches the ribbons and medals pass him by.
A vet is the three anonymous heroes
in The Tom of the Unknowns, whose presence at the
Arlington National Cemetery must forever preserve the
memory of all the anonymous heros whose valor dies
unrecognized with them on the battlefield or in the
ocean’s sunless deep.
A vet is the old guy bagging
groceries at the supermarket – palsied now and
aggravatingly slow – who helped liberate a Nazi death
camp and who wishes all day long that his wife were
still alive to hold him when the nightmares come.
A vet is an ordinary and yet
extraordinary human being, a person who offered some of
his life’s most vital years in the service of his
country, and who sacrificed his ambitions so others
would not have to sacrifice theirs.
A vet is a soldier and a savior and a
sword against the darkness, and he is nothing more that
the finest, greatest testimony of behalf of the finest,
greatest nation ever known.
So remember, each time you see
someone who has served our country, just lean over and
say, “Than You.” That’s all most people need, and in
most cases it will mean more than any medals they could
have been awarded or were awarded.
Two little words that mean a lot,
“THANK YOU”
