Veteran's Day (US)/Remembrance Day (UK/Can/Aus) - 11/11/2016

gawainviii

Whether you were drafted in Vietnam, or volunteered after 9/11; Active Duty, National Guard, and Reserve alike: whether you served as a Cold Warrior, spent your months in the Sandbox, or like me, spent 72-hours in a cold sweat, frightened and suffocating in MOPP gear after the sinking of ROKS Cheonan threatened to reignite the Korean War; some of us signed up for free college, some, to see the world. Still more out of a sense of duty, loyalty, and sacrifice; and others, for the need to protect their home, family and friends. Whatever your reason, whatever your circumstance... To honor my fellow service-members, I can think of nothing more profound to describe what today means to me than Lee Iacocca's prologue from the movie, 'Platoon':

"This jeep is a museum piece, a relic of War. Normandy, Anzio, Guadalcanal, Korea, Vietnam. I hope we will never have to build another jeep for war. This film, 'Platoon' is a memorial, not to War but to the men and women who fought in a time and place nobody really understood, who knew only one thing: they were called and they went. It was the same from the first musket fired at Concord to the rice paddies of the Mekong Delta, they were called and they went. That in the truest sense is the spirit of America, the more we understand it, the more we honor those who have kept it alive."

theraven2378

In Europe a century ago, an entire generation were being decimated. Lest we forget