Recognize some vetrans with a some thanks and a nod.

My Italian Great Grand Pap was in the Navy and he ‘jumped ship’ that was how he got here, lol.
My three Great Uncles were one the Air Force, and every one else has been in the Navy. My Daddy, my Uncle and my Bother.
And the newest My little namesake Dawn was training as a Navel Nurse but she fell in Love….sigh <3

So that makes 5 generations.

My Father-in-Law was in Army.

On my mom’s side my she had three brother’s but only one was in the Army and he got very messed up in Vietnam. He wound up with a metal plate in his head, hanging out in Venice drinkin’ and drugin’ is how my mom puts it. I don’t know what he is up to today.

Mc Smarty works on the Air Force base as a civilian. I’m very grateful that my little (very accident prone) Bother was on three different ships in the gulf during Desert Storm and was safe. My mom was wreck the whole time.

I’m not a fan of war but I do understand why we need a military.

was on that helo. We were way way out at sea. The month before we were in Pearl Harbor and he rounded up some friends and we went to Tripler Army Medical Center to donate blood for his mother’s cancer operation. I’m still disappointed that I was the only officer to go. It wouldn’t have made much difference in the final outcome, but it would have been a nice gesture for the captain or some of the senior folks (we had 17 officer and 150 crew men… it was all men back then) to support him.

The day before this photo, Scott got the word his mother had died. American Red Cross was the only authentic source for telegrams like that. Yes, we got telegrams at sea. This was the 1970s.

Some how a helo flew over to get him to take him to her funeral. It was so big it could not land on my ship, so they lowered a cable and he went up on that.

There were lots of little sacrifices people made to serve, even if not in the war zone.

I visited him at Walter Reed Army Medical Center back in March. I wore my lucky sweater, to have some of his good luck rub off on me.

He was nearly killed by an IED. He did lose both legs at about the knee. He’s 20 years old. He had a lot more important visitors in his stay at the hospital than me, including ambassadors and presidents, celebrities. Most people have no idea how many folks have been to visit. President Bush spent significant time with his family twice in the six months he was there.

I promised him that after he gets his walking legs and can walk again, and after he gets his running legs, which he will, that I would take him on a 5 K run on the national mall, from the Lincoln Memorial to the capital steps and then back to the WWII memorial.

Oh, and could he drive? Parking in DC is a bitch .. plus he’ll have that parking sticker …

_{what? oh, like you were not thinking that}

Personally, I expect him to kick my ass running and go on to live a long and prosperous life. We haven’t gone running yet.

I’ve never been in the service.

When I was of service age the War in Vietnam was burning brightly.

We had the draft then, of course…and I managed to get first a student, later a medical deferment.

However, had I been called I would not have gone, whatever the consequences, such was the force of my disagreement with the war.

So, I was never in the service.

But I knew lots of guys from back then who were, some who supported the war, some who did not.

Only two of those friends of mine came home alive.

Two.

The last time I heard from Keith he was in a VA mental hospital in South California…taken there after barricading himself and several rifles and pistols and hundreds of rounds of ammunition in a cheap motel in San Jose…still suffering the war.

He was the only one hurt, and not from the SWAT team that surrounded the motel.

Ed, a guy from my high school graduating class, was drafted into the Army, was captured somewhere, spent four years as the guest of the North Vietnamese. He was eventually released and came home…to commit suicide three years later.

Who knows why? No one seemed to know, and there was no note.

Two guys I knew went into the Air Force.

One was shot down and killed. The other missing in action, never found.

I bumped into the wife of one last Vietnam era buddy after the war was over and all shut down, maybe five or six years after.

In tears after all that time, she told me the last confirmation she had of him being alive was some information from the Pentagon that he had been taken prisoner and was in Hanoi.

She never heard another word about or from him.

His daughter never knew her daddy.

That WALL up there is all that I know about being in the military.

It’s all I’ll ever know.

I don’t think about you guys often…but when I do I miss you.