You don’t stop to think much about it unless you’re in the service, really. My father and two uncles were veterans–WWII and Korea. My nephew is a Marine now, learning his trade before they send him to Afghanistan sometime in 2012.
I work with veterans on a daily basis, as my company’s executive staff is led by a veteran, two of my three bosses are veterans (and Marines, no less!), and a significant percentage of our employees are veterans. My synagogue is close to an army base, and we get soldiers from time to time (not necessarily Jewish; we’re happy to have any soldier visit us for a few hours off base and a nice little snack). All of these people have something that I never could reach, myself. I looked into ROTC during my sophomore year in college and decided that I didn’t have what it takes to join the army. I did, however, have the respect that many of my generation never had for the military. I grew up watching the end of the Vietnam war, but I could not comprehend the scumbags who spit on returning vets and booed them in airports. My cousin’s first husband was a Vietnam vet. He flew a COBRA over there for six months. The life-expectancy of a COBRA pilot was thirty days. I asked him (I was very young) if his service affected him after he got back home. He said that he couldn’t stand Chinese food anymore, but that was it.
Some of you may watch Dancing With the Stars. There’s a veteran on it now, J.R. Martinez, who was on All My Children. He was badly burned in Iraq after driving over a land mine in his Humvee. The cost of that war is more than most of us realize, since most of us calculate it only through the tax dollars spent over there (a pretty crappy way to tally it, anti-war protestors and Ron Paul). It’s a cost I pray that my nephew doesn’t ever pay. He and his compatriots are doing so much more for this country than the selfish, self-centered little twits at the Occupy encampments all over the country. There really is no comparison, although one has to note that those in uniform never brag about what they’re doing for our country, and those in the Occupy encampments can’t shut up about how much they’re doing to change our nation. And yet, our nation continues on, unchanged, except for being a little dirtier and smellier in many downtown areas.
So, to all of you veterans who read this blog, and to the ones that don’t: Thank you for your service. It is appreciated by many more people than you know.