by Hollis Wormsby, Jr.
Veteran’s Day is Coming, Thank a Veteran for Their Service
On November 11, the nation will pause for a day to honor the services provided by our many Veterans in defense of this great nation. It is important to remember the hardships that come with military service. We all understand the grief encountered when a military member makes the ultimate sacrifice, but it is also important to remember the daily sacrifices made by service members and their families.
In today’s military I have talked with soldiers who say they have been deployed and away from their families for as much as three out of the last five years. What an incredible sacrifice to make. This means missing birthdays, missing Christmases, wedding anniversaries and maybe most importantly milestones in their children’s lives. This is a tremendous sacrifice they make on behalf of our freedom.
There is an old war movie where Clint Eastwood plays the top Sargent for an Airborne Squadron. Over the course of the movie someone asks Eastwood’s character if he thinks he is crazy and Eastwood’s answer is simple, he tells the person, “You have to be crazy to jump out of a perfectly good airplane.” And yet our military members do these kinds of crazy things on behalf of our democracy on an almost daily basis. I have a very good friend who is a former Air Force fighter pilot and when I asked him what he thought made him most uniquely qualified to do a job that few could do, he said it was that he was dumb enough to fly into stuff most folks would have the sense to fly away from.
In recent years we have engaged in conflicts in Bosnia, Serbia, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Kuwait, officially. We are currently engaged in air strikes over parts of Syria and Iraq. All of these actions involve the sacrifices of members of our military.
The Veteran’s Day Holiday was originally set up to celebrate Armistice Day, in celebration of the ending of World War II, but was eventually expanded to be a holiday celebrating all military contributions to this nation. How sad that as we anticipate this Veteran’s Day that there are reports of VA hospitals so severely underfunded that they are unable to provide our Veterans with the medical care they so richly deserve. Should not our most humble expression of appreciation as a nation be our assurances that on behalf of their sacrifices we will ensure that their needs are cared for, for life? Should we not be ashamed that a man or woman has served our nation with distinction and yet now when they have a service disability related need we tell them to wait? What if they had told us to wait when we needed their service?
What sense of shame should we feel when we discover that there are men and women who honorably served this nation who are now homeless on the streets because they did not receive the support they needed to successfully transition back to civilian life. How can those of us who have never had to endure the misery and the supposed hell of combat look down on someone who has and is now having difficulty handling the aftermath, and not feel a sense of shame. To me the existence of even a single homeless Veteran is a national act of shame.
So this Veteran’s Day, don’t just go to the parade and marvel at the big guns. Don’t just view it as a day to relax or get set some extra work done around your home. Challenge yourself to find something to do for even one Veteran who may be struggling to find a way to cope with transitioning from hells we probably cannot even imagine. Remember if not for Veterans just like the ones whose needs so many of us choose to ignore, the rest of us might have a lot less to enjoy as well.
Or at least that is the way I see it.
(Do you have a question or comment on this column? Look me up on Facebook/HollisWormsby or email me at hjwormsby@aol.com.)
