Just The News –
As the United States officially observes its 77th annual Veterans Day, former service members themselves have staked out ways to honor fellow veterans throughout the year. The methods include giving back through service, building monuments, and creating lifestyle brands that celebrate fealty.
The overall goal of such efforts is to strengthen bonds and heal wounds, said Jan Scruggs, who in 1979 spearheaded efforts to build the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington D.C.
“Beginning in 1775 our citizens have fought for freedom and to punish our enemies,” Scruggs told Just the News. And, while official commemorative events are important, he noted, much is being done by individual and small groups of veterans.
Retired Army Master Sergeant Norman Hooten, a legendary warrior made famous as “Hoot” in the 2002 film “Black Hawk Down,” two years ago commenced fighting on behalf of vets who were addicted to opioids. Hooten at age 57 became a pharmacist working for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. He soon expanded his efforts to help other vets. more
That was beautiful,sent it to my Favorite Vet my Big brother.
Heading to West L.A. VA in a few minutes with a veteran friend who was the first PTSD patient in their new program about 10 years ago. We raised the most $ ever this time, about $2,000 to buy comfort food for the Combat Trauma Veterans, and in addition bringing blankets, books, and other entertainment items.
When we were there on Memorial Day coronavirus rules were in effect, so we were able to drop off the stuff but not to go into the wards. It was clear from the couple of residents who came out to help with the food that they were under a lot of stress from being in such isolation; I can only imagine how they are doing now. I expect we will be dropping off similarly today, but hoping we can go into the wards.
I did not serve, but am grateful that I can show my appreciation for those who have.
With joy I can call my Dad and my son and thank them for their service.
And to all the fine VETERANS at IOTW, thank you for your service and God bless you and keep you
You’re welcome. It was nothing (almost literally: three years as a medical equipment repairman in Korea and at Walter Reed).
I want to offer deeply heartfelt thanks to all combat veterans and to all the families of those who didn’t make it back in one piece, or even make it back at all. Bless you all.
I’ve been in a lot of cemetaries.
Seems like an odd thing to say for someone who’s not affiliated with The Quiet Trade, but it’s a fact.
I’ve been to cemetaries great and small. I’ve been in cemetaries for family members on the top of a mountain flattened by mining. I’ve been to Catholic cemetaries with bishops buried around a giant memorial needle and secular cemetaries where there are no statues or mention of God where there’s just a marker that doesn’t even have dates. I’ve been to the National Cemetary in Gettysburg and read from Lincoln’s speech there, to Arlington where we lay my grandmother beside a hero grandfather that I never knew because he was gone well before I arrived, to plots in no-name places with a dozen graves and to middle sized cemetaries that want you to know about their mausoleum and crypt services.
I’ve been to funerals wildly varying in scale as well. I’ve been in 3 car motorcades, if you want to call them that, and in full-dress fireman funerals where entire fire companies made a Code 3 procession down a highway to an arch of aerial ladders with a huge flag between them to a grave ringed by emergency vehicles in black bunting. I’ve stood at the gravesides with hundreds of mourners, and at gravesides where it’s just a half-dozen if you count the clergy and the sexton. I’ve stood at a grave where the dirt from the father’s grave partly covered the stone of the infant son just next to him that preceded him.
I’ve carried my share of coffins, too. I’ve borne part of the weight of a dear church member and mentor that helped lead me to salvation. I’ve borne a sixth of the coffins of two veteran uncles on my wife’s side, and the wife of one of them who followed her man closely to the grave, in one case where I had to help because he had a son who continuned their estrangement beyond the grave. I’ve helped carry a heroin addict I did not know well for the comfort of his father who is a dear freind, about whom I could not offer the family the Blessed Assurance of the Lord, just the cold confort of the fact that he’s in the hands of a just god. I carried my own father to the pulley system that would lower his remains to their eternal concrete home, baptizing the cold steel in tears as I turned to gently place it over the yawning abyss to which I would abandon it forever.
From this, and much more, I know of death, of ceremony, of mourning, of grief and of the hope of glory, and the words that eulogize people that the vast majority of us will never know.
And of all that, the most moving, the most stirring, the most complete of those are those of the veterans. There is something to be said for the fact that the Services maintain a bond well after the service of youth is ended, and a sense of continuation when a group of young men in unforms matching that of the old man being laid to rest attend the funeral for the sole purpose of honoring his service, with one who is honored by and gives honor to the veteran by presenting the flag to the grieving widow. I’ve stood beside more than one family member when they were told ‘On behalf of the president of the United States, the United States (armed forces) and a grateful nation, please accept this flag as a symbol of our appreciation for your loved one’s honorable and faithful service.”, and reverently handed a flag folded meticulously into a cocked had by immaculately gloved hands that had until recently covered the vessel of the veteran who had served under it.
I have heard the thunder of the guns fired in salute and a message to Heaven that a warrior was on the way.
And seen crowds of people, many of whom didn’t even like the guy, crumble into tears.
And I have never felt that to be insincere on the part of those rendering those honors.
Whatever else the military does, it takes care of its own. I never served myself for the simple reason that the service of my choice would not have me due to some poor academic choices i had made as a youth, but I saw up close how the Air Force supported my own father beyond the grave even though his service flying MATS transports to Korea and elsewhere was little more than a dim memory by then to his adult children.
They remembered what we never knew.
I saw veterans go to the casket of my wife’s uncle who served honorably in Vietnam, count his service stripes on his sleeve, admire and explain his medals, speak well of a man they had no kinship with other than the shared bond of service.
They knew what we never did.
I will never know that kinship, that espirit de corps, that ability to love a brother while also be able to walk over his fallen body, grab his dog tags, and press the fight before time can be given to mourn in wartime, or the ability to give that sense of continuity and honor to those fallen in peacetime, but I can see it as an outsider, and know that that camaraderie is real, and is a gift from God that unites all those that serve under that single banner into a whole that is greater than any other that exists anywhere else on this Earth.
Too often, this service is not understood even by the children of the service members. In most cases, Dad did all the ‘cool stuff’ before starting a family, so when the kids come along and get old enough to understand, it’s just a jumble of pictures without context of a dashing young fellow who barely looks like the person they know who has been ground by Time and Life to where he little resembles that brash young fellow who spent his younger years in fatigues. There’s a hat and a coat that’s hung in the closet forever that have all sorts of little brass things on them, but clearly wouldn’t fit the man his children know. The sad fact is that most vets don’t talk about it…and that most children don’t ask about it. Whatever it was the old man did, he’s not doing it NOW, so who cares?
Who cares.
Well, we should.
Though we do not know them, though we may only know of them, though we may not be able to see who they were then in the blanket-wrapped, wizened shape of who they are now, we should understand what they gave for us.
These men and women literally gave their youth for our freedom. They sacrificed their security for ours. They put their lives on the line so we could be free to critize them. They gave up warm homes, good food, and peaceful lives for the rigors of drill, for the uncertainties of deployment, for the dangers of being maimed and dying on fields far from any home they ever knew, and were and are little rewarded for it but by a pittance paycheck and sometimes the scorn and derision of their countrymen.
And they did this with a sense of honor and duty few know in civilian life.
We SHOULD care, because these were our best.
We SHOULD care, because these moved our flag forward, and how we treat THEM is a reliable indicator of how we treat this NATION they represent.
We SHOULD care, because they are our fathers and mothers, our sons and daughters, called in a way that we were not to fulfil a higher purpose, and we may never see them again outside of a cemetary.
And so, to the cemetary, we return, as we all must, sooner or later.
I will not dishonor this Veterans’ Day with talk of what may lead them in these coming dark days. These soldiers are worthy and honorable, and will fulfill their Oaths to God and Country whether any future politican wants them to or not.
Instead I will go back to that cemetary in Gettysburg that stood astride a country that was riven against itself, to the words inscribed on that most prominent memorial that stands there, surrounded by the forgotten treasure of a bygone era, but not a bygone Nation, that still exists today because of her children that are called to serve. And while Lincoln himself may be in some ways contriversial, in this context, these words are not.
“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead—who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
– A. Lincoln, “Gettysburg Address”.
…those words have lost none of their meaning in the world we live in today.
But I have no doubt that this Nation’s warriors will rise to the occasion yet again, and once more save this Nation from herself.
With the help and the grace of God.
May the Lord bless and keep you, and may you be given some small measure of the honor you deserve on this day, Veterans of the United States Armed Forces. May the Lord protect those who yet serve, comfort those wounded in their service, and grant those who have served the dignity and respect they have earned over and over again, until they, too go to their final rest under the Flag they followed, when their fellow soldiers fire a volley and pick up the mantle and continue ever forward in their name.
Thank you for your service.
And May God Bless you all.
Uncle Al NOVEMBER 11, 2020 AT 1:54 PM
“You’re welcome. It was nothing (almost literally: three years as a medical equipment repairman in Korea and at Walter Reed”
“When I consider how my light is spent,
Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,
And that one Talent which is death to hide
Lodged with me useless, though my Soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest he returning chide;
“Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?”
I fondly ask. But patience, to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, “God doth not need
Either man’s work or his own gifts; who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state
Is Kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed
And post o’er Land and Ocean without rest:
They also serve who only stand and wait.”
-JOHN MILTON, Sonnet 19
Thank you.
And to all the Veterans out there who don’t get thanked today,
Thank You!
(And to my son who is still active Army, a special thanks for all he’s been through!)
SNS, you brought me to tears. I still have a spent shell of my dad’s 21 gun salute sitting next to his picture in uniform from WWII. Mom and Dad are resting in the National Cemetery in the city they lived most of their 50+ years of marriage.
But they aren’t there, only their bodies. They are sitting at the feet of Jesus, blessed and happy; only to return long enough to pick up their glorified bodies when Christ returns.
I look for that day; either in my lifetime or beyond.
Thank you for your touching words.
sns
At 1st glance hyor posts seem verbose. But after a red I am unable to deit them.
Another wordy good job!
My time was well spent!
an ol exJarhead
NOVEMBER 11, 2020 AT 5:04 PM
The praise of the praiseworthy such as yourself is beyond measure, thank you, but I am humbled because I have no words big enough to do true justice to you, and so many others here that served well and honorably.
So all I have left are the same small ones.
Thank you.
And God Bless You.
The one thing I really need to do is to quit procrastinating and join the American Legion this next year. My dad and all my Uncles, my father in law etc. were all members of the American Legion and I should be too. The other idea that I’ve thought about and I’m not quite sure how to do it would be to start a pen pal for plane captains initiative with older veterans like myself who were plane captains in the Navy to share our experiences with all the new plane captains serving in Navy fighter squadrons and aboard aircraft carriers. I think it would be beneficial to older veterans as well as all the newer guys and gals in the Navy now. I might have to call someone in the Navy who might know how to start such a program. This is something I’ve thought about for a while, a way to give back from my experiences to a newer generation of plane captains, they could learn from my experience with F 4 Phantoms at the end of the Vietnam War and I might learn something about F 18 Hornets and the newer fighters that they fly. The technology and the jets may have changed since Vietnam but the overall experience of working on the flight deck of an aircraft carrier probably hasn’t changed that much, it’s still one of the most dangerous and demanding jobs in the World as well as responsible jobs with being entrusted with a multi million dollar aircraft when you’re 19, 20, 21, 22 years old, that much hasn’t changed I’m sure.
Claudia
NOVEMBER 11, 2020 AT 3:55 PM
Just got back from piping at my father’s grave, you know what I mean, after placing a flag there in remembrance of the day.
You are correct, he is not there.
But part of my heart always will be.
So still I must go there from time to time to comfort it.
Cemeteries are for the living, not the dead.
The graves are just there to give us a focus for our loss.
I go not there to mourn the dead.
But rather in commiseration for the sorrows we the living still must face without them.
“27 And there followed him a great company of people, and of women, which also bewailed and lamented him.
28 But Jesus turning unto them said, Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me, but weep for yourselves, and for your children.”
Luke 23:27-28
…this world is set to do some heavy weeping.
But a day like this reminds us that there is honor in this sin-sick world still.
God Bless,
SNS
As the oldest son out of 4 boys I was given my dads flag when he passed away in 2018 at his funeral and memorial at the Eastern Washington veterans cemetery in Medical Lake, Wash. I too hope to be buried there someday when I’m gone and for my son to get my flag as well. It’s truly a peaceful and beautiful site in the midst of sprawling wheat fields on the outskirts of Medical Lake where they honor veterans from all over Eastern Wash. and N. Idaho. My dad was a Sergeant in the Air Force in a Radio Communications Squadron between World War 2 and Korea and was in Berlin at the time of the Berlin Airlift in 1948.
SNS, agreed. I sit at Mom and Dad’s site about once a month to just remember them. Soothes my soul when life gets too busy.