One thing that should never be forgotten is that most of our veterans were drafted into active duty before they had made twenty one. That means they had to live through a major conflict while still relatively young. Every psychiatrist would say it has deeply influenced their lives. There have been some times as I talked to one that his younger self could easily be imagined.

While I was in junior high my part time job was sacking groceries at the only grocery store in Los Lunas. One time I took a load of groceries out to a guy who was a World War One veteran. As I was loading his grocery bags into the car he told me about how he had volunteered. He also said that the early volunteers like him didn’t serve our country. They were made part of the British army. That was mostly done by residents of our north east states.

Later on as a veteran myself I got the opportunity to talk with veterans of later wars. In the VA hospital in Amarillo I met a World War Two veteran while we were waiting on our appointments. It still amazes me that some young man from the Texas Pan Handle could survive as a Marine. The wet humid weather of the Pacific Ocean is a lot different than the hot dry weather he was raised in.

To get some eye surgery I had to go to the VA hospital in Big Springs. While way down there I met some Korean War veterans. These veterans have never been given the same kind of honor the earlier ones have. The cold fact that China had sent down some of their own troops into North Korea and killed some of ours has become a hidden part of history.

One of those Korean War veterans had fought for us in Vietnam. Those veterans surely haven’t been strangers. I even had one as a teacher in junior high. This is a group of veterans that have really been frowned on. Several peace groups have blamed them for not being draft dodgers. They think every young man should have hidden off and smoked dope with them instead of serving our country. Just like in the Korean War our troops had to face a hidden army. Russia had not only supplied North Vietnam. They had supplied troops into that small wild country on the west side of Vietnam. Who really knows how or why an honored World War Two veteran president wouldn’t supply his troops as well as he had been? Unlike the war he had served in President Kennedy faced a force armed with nuclear weapons. Russia was a truly harmful threat.

That feeling by the President probably was drawn from the time he had to face Cuba over it. There was one time when Russia tried to secretly supply the Communist dictator of that island with some weapons to be used against America. We had even be told in high school how our President had worked against it. That one veteran had saved us from any nuclear war before he got assassinated. That should always be remembered in his honor.

Next we get some veterans of my generation. It was really fortunate that our chief commanding officer, President Bush, had been a serious World War Two veteran. We were not deployed with insufficient weapons like our predecessors had been. It sure made us look back making comparisons with how World War Two had been fought in the Middle East. Iran had to match Japan a bit. Before we were deployed against Iraq Iran had attacked our embassy and killed the troops we had guarding our ambassador. That compares exactly with how Japan attacked us in Hawaii.

In the first Gulf War we ended up with a commanding General that could think as well as the ones used against Germany. He has even talked politically like one of those chief Generals after the Korean War. I can truly hope all the next veterans get honored a lot more than we have. Veterans Day should help them all.