Community Chat

[jubilant]

[phoenixbrd]

Much respect and love to our vets, especially to my father.💕🇺🇸

[PhilaLady1]

Thanks so much to all that served and serve to keep our country free!

[CalminHeart]

I think of my son today, deployed 4 times. I also think of his 13 friends and one of his soldiers who died in Afghanistan and Iraq. I knew some of them too. No one should see that much death in their 20s and early 30s. 

I pray for soldiers with PTSD, who can't get adequate medical care/mental health care, are jobless & homeless, who struggle with what they've seen and heard, for families can't come to grips with what war did to their loved ones, and for congress to pass the bills needed to take care of veterans. 

So many in congress voted against the PACT Act (until they were humiliated into voting for it), Clay-Hunt Suicide Prevention Act, Veterans Retraining Act, Health Benefits and Retirement Pay Restoration, Wounded Veterans Job Security Act, Disabled Veterans Home Disability Act, Job Corp Act, Torture Veterans and Victim Relief, and Veterans Business Center Act. 

[Big Joanie]

Also thank you to family who supported these brave individuals ....

[Vivian]

My father and my uncles were all WW2 veterans. Several years ago, my husband and I took a tour of WW1 battlegrounds...Ypres, Paschendale, and others. We also visited British military cemeteries in the region. There are huge craters remaining and farmers in the region are still digging up remnants of what they called The Great War. I also visited the American cemetery in Château Thierry France, as well as the very moving WW2 cemetery in Normandy. Every town and village in France has a memorial to all their local people who died in both world wars. The losses were staggering, military and civilian.

We honor veterans on November 11 because that was the official end to WW1. At 11 am, on the 11th day of the 11th month (1918) the war ended and Armistice was declared. That's why the holiday was originally called Armistice Day. In the UK you'll see everyone wearing poppies on their lapels. This represents a poem, "In Flanders Fields" which made reference to the poppies that grew wild around the graves in military cemeteries. Going to that region of Europe really brought home the sacrifice, heroism, and  loss suffered by so many people, many of whom were very young.

[skatting44]

 There is a little less than 1% of Americans who enter the military  to protect the rest of us 99%. Many people just take our Veterans service for granted .

Will there be men and women in the future to protect us with enrollment so low ?

[phoenixbrd]

@CalminHeart   Thank you for this post.  We need to take care of our country and especially those serving to protect it.  Much respect to your son and all the brave who put their lives on the line.

[Carolina925]

@Vivian , thanks for knowing why Veterans Day is 11/11. A friend mentioned the other day that she thought "they" would make Veterans Day on a Monday so there would be another 3 day weekend. I really had to fight my mouth from opening on that comment. When someone else in our conversation group said she thought Halloween should always fall on a weekend night and she said that was crazy, Halloween is always on the 31st.  Sometimes you just have to wonder...

[Cakers3]

Thank you to my Dad, to my DH, to my DS, to my friends from the Viet Nam era, to all veterans, and to all families and loved one of veterans.

May you always be remembered, respected, cared for, loved, and never alone.