Veteran's Day has Fallen Too.

I was born...

…in the shadow of WW2: Three years almost to the day after the surrender of Nazi forces in Europe and about two and a half years after the defeat of Japan. I grew-up alongside my youthful peers among the LUCKY portion of children of the post-war world. Many of our parents were war veterans. Although my father had not served directly (fractured skull playing baseball), I had one uncle who was a bombardier and at least two others who had wartime service. My future father-in-law was a tank commander in Northern Europe. One of the most decorated soldiers of the Italian Campaign was a damaged native of my hometown. I had friends whose fathers served in places like Burma and North Africa. Sixteen million Americans had been in uniform by 1945.

As youngsters, the war was all round us. I still remember going to acquaintances’ homes and rummaging through boxes of war-time trinkets and curios: Medals, stamps, currency, photos, odd wartime keepsakes of all kinds. Every town had an army-surplus store where kids could stock-up on helmet-liners, bayonets, shovels, canteens; all the leftovers of a successful global enterprise in the service of the only right and just cause.

We all played ‘army’ as a kid’s pastime (Do they still do that?). We’d hide in small teams around the neighborhood (all in our comical army-surplus garb with little dime-store toy weapons) and the ‘enemy’ team would come look for us. At school, we surreptitiously drew war scenes and equipment from our over-cooked imaginations onto our tablets. It wasn’t all fun. Even as children, we knew older people who weren’t ‘right’, or who exhibited obvious physical disabilities. It was vaguely understood to be because of “…the war” or “…being overseas”. Alcoholism was not an uncommon feature in our parents’ lives. We didn’t know the ones who didn’t return, but they were also a melancholy unseen presence in the background.

It’s hard to overstate the PRIDE that even us youngsters felt in that moment of maximum American power and nobility. We had faced down and destroyed (forever, or so we naively thought) the purest evil that had ever visited the earth with the only weapons it understood. There seemed no limit to what we might do in the service of a future better world. Veteran’s Day as we know it was established in 1954. It was in keeping with the righteous but weary triumphalism of those American days, and in solemn celebration of those who had sacrificed to accomplish them. But it was also an unspoken pledge to carry forward what they had started.

There were fits and starts, but for the next sixty-nine years, Veteran’s Day stood for what’s right and good about America. It stood for our willingness to sacrifice much (EVERYTHING, if need be) to ensure the full blessings of freedom, justice, and prosperity not only for ourselves but for civilization and humankind. And to do so not only in our own times but for all posterity into the future. For all our many faults, we nonetheless (and sometimes in spite of ourselves) stood as a beacon and the one remaining hope for the world in dark moments. We passed the torch along as our unspoken duty commanded (No one had to tell us. We knew what it was). Entire countries flourished in the civilized world we did so much to create. Generations had chances they would not otherwise have had.

UNTIL NOVEMBER 5th, 2024.

On the darkest day of our modern American story (maybe our WHOLE story ever?), we sold out. We quit. I used to watch the “Band of Brothers” from end-to-end during stressful periods in my own life. I was inspired by the simple courage and resolve these Americans demonstrated and their stoic ability to forge-on against all adversity. Alongside many others of like mind, they saved the world, at least for a while.

FOR WHAT? To let this evil that we had vanquished from the earth eighty years earlier dress itself up as one of us, and walk right in by invitation through the front door without firing a shot? It looks that way for now. This degenerate buffoon who openly disparages our soldiers and has no understanding of what their sacrifices have done for the world (and will do again, Lord willing) is President for the SECOND time, God help us all. I do not for a moment accept that this can be the end of our story. I hope there must come a time again where Veterans Day will once more live its purpose in our hearts.

Just not today.