Veterans Day has come around again as it does every fall, arriving with a new crispness in the air and the days of a year that seemed new just yesterday now dwindled to a precious few.
If none of those signs had signaled its arrival, the advertising of big sales at the malls would have reminded those without more personal and less commercial ties to military service.
In this year the last living British veteran of World War I died. The last American combat veteran of The Great War died in 2007 at age 108. The Greatest Generation veterans of World War II who once numbered 15 million and changed the face of this nation are slipping away fast now. Likewise, the veterans of Korea, the forgotten war, are fading away. The ranks of more than 3 million who served in the Vietnam War are thinning as well.
Our two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are contributing a smaller but steady stream of new veterans joining the ranks. Political and military leaders are analyzing and deciding on a future course in Afghanistan that could lock us into years more of combat and many more new veterans.
But military service today is reserved for the few who volunteer, unlike the days of big wars and conscription or the draft, which filled the ranks with millions of young men.
Today in this nation of 300 million, fewer than 1 percent wear the uniform, and, with their families, bear all the burden and sacrifice of protecting and defending the rest of us who give little thought to those who pay the price for our freedom.
It isn’t right and it certainly isn’t what those bold revolutionaries who ripped a continent out of the hands of a king at the risk of their own lives and property intended for the nation they created.
The least the rest of us can do is show a bit of gratitude and respect for our veterans, old and new, and for those serving under our flag today on foreign fields of battle. They don’t start the wars. That’s up to the political chickenhawks who so proudly and loudly bang the drums and march the sons and daughters of other, quieter citizens off to bloody battle.
If there was a fair and equitable requirement for national service — if they had some skin in the game — I wonder how they would vote on those resolutions enabling and paying for our wars without end. You seldom hear old soldiers prescribing war as a solution for anything.
Today’s wars are bringing home hundreds of thousands of new veterans in dire need of jobs, education, medical and mental health care, and a warm welcome home to a nation grateful for all they have so selflessly given.
Over 30 percent of returning combat veterans — many of whom have served two or three or four or more combat tours — are in need of skilled counseling for post-traumatic stress disorder.
Others are victims of traumatic brain injury from the blasts of the enemy’s powerful home-made mines and bombs.
Still others have suffered multiple amputations of arms and legs.
Email Story
Printer Friendly 
Quick Job Search
@Nyx.replyAnswerText@