I’m not sure why I felt compelled to write this today. I put out my flag like a good patriot, but it just didn’t seem like enough today. I am a Vietnam era veteran myself, but never saw combat and for some strange reason, feel a bit ashamed of that.

I’m posting it anyway…even if only a few will read it…I don’t care. The words were in my mind and just had to come out through my fingers.

Today is Veteran’s Day…only one day! Every Day should be Veteran’s Day…every damned day of every year!

It’s veteran’s Day and all is not well either here in the U.S.A. or most anywhere else in the world. But I must admit, the U.S.A. is the safest and the best place in the world to be and to live. And of course, it is because many of our citizens willingly gave their lives in defense of our freedoms…so we are told.

Personally, I think those lives were lost maybe not defending our freedoms, but keeping others from taking them away. Maybe that’s the same thing to some, but for me it is somehow different.

In WWII, we killed the Japanese because they killed us…mostly in Pearl Harbor and we killed the Germans in Normandy for the same reasons. Thank God I never saw my buddy or my new friend get killed right near me. So I don’t…no let’s make that I can’t have those same feelings and memories that those brave soldiers who did see those things happen have etched in their memories. I can’t possibly imagine how extraordinarily difficult it is for them to not be able to erase those images from their minds.

“Thank you” just seems too little on this day or any other day in time. It seems way too trite…way too automatic…way too mechanical. I hear it said many, many times…“Thank you” with the sayer quickly moving on to the next conversation in their script. I cannot recall anyone saying “thank you” to a veteran while looking that person straight in the eyes and really saying “thank God for your efforts…thank you for not dying…thank you for being able to watch your buddy die while maintaining your own sanity.” And most of all Thank You for helping to defend our way of life from those who would take it away from us.