Veteran's Day

Growing up, my father didn't talk much about the war.  Born in 1925, he was the age my second child is now when he boarded a bus in California for basic training at Fort Dix in New Jersey.  My second child.  One of my favorite pictures in the world is of the two of them together on the beach, my father lying peacefully in the sand with my then baby boy snuggling up to him.  It's the last picture I have of them together.

Ninety days after his arrival at Fort Dix, daddy was on big troop ship headed for Southampton on the coast of England.  He would remain there training, preparing, meeting new people, most likely drinking with buddies when he had time off, no doubt missing his baby sister half a world away in his tiny hometown of 2000, and certainly terrified to the core of the unknown battles that lay ahead.  He had good reason to be frightened.  He could not have imagined that a short time later, as part of the Third Army, he'd be packing mortar and machine gun through the frozen forests of Belgium and Germany in the bloodiest battle of World War II.  Some 19,000 teenagers and young men gave their lives for the cause of freedom in the Batle of the Bulge. Over 80,000 wounded, captured or missing.  The wounded included my dad, who took shrapnel in the back from an exploding shell, got stiches and a purple heart, and spent the rest of that Winter marching to Berlin with frostbitten feet.  Daddy could spell and type, so he was recruited to clerk after the war and remained overseas for the duration of the Nueremberg War Crime Trials.  Guess it's not hard to figure why he didn't talk about it much. You can't erase that stuff.

He came back to the States after the trials and got his degree on the GI bill and went to work.  He could work longer and harder, with more dedication to the task at hand, than anyone I've ever known.  In the 60's when me and my brother were kids, daddy didn't like the war in Vietnam.  I think it was a combination of the lack of clarity in the mission, the first-hand awareness of the horror of war, and his fear of seeing us go through what he went through. 

I had my my father's dog tags from World War II when I was a kid.  I lost them.  Serving our country as a scared teenager who became a man through the accelerated aging that accompanies the absolute terror of the battlefield, he lost something too.  They all did.  The men and women of his generation and time weren't kids like we were kids.  They had an inner strength and drive and will to live born of the great struggles of their youth.  They had far more interest in creation than recreation.  To them, work was a privilege.  How could it not be?  How could they not live and serve and work to the absolute fullest when to do otherwise would be to dishonor those who gave everything to preserve that privilege?  Those who would do their greatest work on that cold, bloody battlefield.

There's a reason they call people from my father's generation "The Greatest Generation".  They saved the world.  That's all.  And when they came home, they went to work and built a better world for all of us.  I'm going to do my best to honor that in the only way I know how.  I'm going to work today. 

It's Veteran's Day.  If you're a Veteran, please put your feet up and enjoy some much-deserved rest.  If you're in the company of a Veteran, do all you can to see that they get the most out of today, and every day.  But if you're like me, someone who has the honor and privilege of being an American because other's served, how about joining me in a productive day at work, while the ones who truly deserve it take the day off?

Appreciate your freedom?  Thank a Vet.