Veterans Day 2011
11-11-11 has hit.
"What I hate about playing football with Jake is he tackles and twists you totally around so you end on your back! That would be unnecessary roughness in a game!"
"And then he he runs with his arms like this..."
"Did you eat breakfast yet????"
"No, I'm just getting my strawberry milk!"
"No you're not! You're telling me about your football game! EAT!!!!"
"You should have seen Dad's cookies, they were BURNT!"
I better wait with this attempt at writing, no moment without talk from the motor mouth...
He is on A-B honor role this time. I am very proud, since he missed 2 weeks of school, visiting his Aunt Chris in Wales, on the way also seeing Paris and London, "MOM! Look!"
He races in, tunes in the TV to a basketball show... what now. He is gone, I watch a Dove commercial.
"Just wait, sports have a lot of channels, so they have a lot of commercials to pay for their TV stations. There is an aircraft carrier with a basketball court on it. Just watch. All the teams are wearing army or military colors. It took them like three years to work this out. One year it rained, and last year it was too cold. They didn't want players to get sick."
I will get to see it all tonight at 7(I think). I am SO on the cusp of what's happening...
Tyll, my brother, is a veteran of the army. He served years ago, not in a war, thank goodness, but did his duty as required of his country. I have two sons who served. Jason just retired from the army after 8 years, and serving in Iraq once. Aaron also went to Iraq once, and is still in the army. One son wanted to enlist, and we found out that suddenly the rules have become very stringent. The economy is so poor, so many young men want to enlist, that the services do not take anyone that wants to join. Now they want only graduates, you have to pass an entrance exam, you can't have a record(especially related to drug use), and they have quotas that once filled cannot be passed. You have to meet high standards to die for our country these days. It is like applying for college.
"Better Run, Better Run, faster than my mother...all the other kids..", sings Weslee as he goes out to the bus stop.
The shows I have seen that have centered around war experiences talk about the noise, the injury, the guns, the enemy, the aircraft, the amazing behavior of some men, the deaths of many. They speak to the experiences that no one can forget, lives changed forever, and worlds remade by the events on battlefields of names never intended to induce trauma or shock.
At the end of World War 2 I performed with my Mother for the American soldiers who freed us from the tyranny of Hitler. This was my first time on stage with my Mother, and she saved photos which I cherish. I was about three at the time, so this was in 1945 or 1946.
I have mentioned my Father, an artist, which I have no memory of meeting. He was forced to go to war even though being a conscientious objector, and was on the ambulance squad. He did not return, and died somewhere on the Romanian front. I have several Uncles that served in the German Army, and they survived as prisoners of war, one in Russia, one in England, one in America. I have several distant cousins housed in America as POW for the duration of the war. I found letters from them to my Aunt Barbi recently.
Veterans this day might deal with other people's conflicted feelings. If they praise you for your honorable actions, they do not "get" that it is horrible to be in a war. If they shun you because you had to go to war, they do not "get" that this is how a country remains "Free" in a world where tyrants abound. Let us all just silently pray that war be ended so we can someday phase out the need for a "Veteran's Day".
"What I hate about playing football with Jake is he tackles and twists you totally around so you end on your back! That would be unnecessary roughness in a game!"
"And then he he runs with his arms like this..."
"Did you eat breakfast yet????"
"No, I'm just getting my strawberry milk!"
"No you're not! You're telling me about your football game! EAT!!!!"
"You should have seen Dad's cookies, they were BURNT!"
I better wait with this attempt at writing, no moment without talk from the motor mouth...
He is on A-B honor role this time. I am very proud, since he missed 2 weeks of school, visiting his Aunt Chris in Wales, on the way also seeing Paris and London, "MOM! Look!"
He races in, tunes in the TV to a basketball show... what now. He is gone, I watch a Dove commercial.
"Just wait, sports have a lot of channels, so they have a lot of commercials to pay for their TV stations. There is an aircraft carrier with a basketball court on it. Just watch. All the teams are wearing army or military colors. It took them like three years to work this out. One year it rained, and last year it was too cold. They didn't want players to get sick."
I will get to see it all tonight at 7(I think). I am SO on the cusp of what's happening...
Tyll, my brother, is a veteran of the army. He served years ago, not in a war, thank goodness, but did his duty as required of his country. I have two sons who served. Jason just retired from the army after 8 years, and serving in Iraq once. Aaron also went to Iraq once, and is still in the army. One son wanted to enlist, and we found out that suddenly the rules have become very stringent. The economy is so poor, so many young men want to enlist, that the services do not take anyone that wants to join. Now they want only graduates, you have to pass an entrance exam, you can't have a record(especially related to drug use), and they have quotas that once filled cannot be passed. You have to meet high standards to die for our country these days. It is like applying for college.
"Better Run, Better Run, faster than my mother...all the other kids..", sings Weslee as he goes out to the bus stop.
The shows I have seen that have centered around war experiences talk about the noise, the injury, the guns, the enemy, the aircraft, the amazing behavior of some men, the deaths of many. They speak to the experiences that no one can forget, lives changed forever, and worlds remade by the events on battlefields of names never intended to induce trauma or shock.
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| Fritz Sass |
I have mentioned my Father, an artist, which I have no memory of meeting. He was forced to go to war even though being a conscientious objector, and was on the ambulance squad. He did not return, and died somewhere on the Romanian front. I have several Uncles that served in the German Army, and they survived as prisoners of war, one in Russia, one in England, one in America. I have several distant cousins housed in America as POW for the duration of the war. I found letters from them to my Aunt Barbi recently.
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| Letter to my Aunt Barbi |
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| front of letter |
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| back of POW page |
Veterans this day might deal with other people's conflicted feelings. If they praise you for your honorable actions, they do not "get" that it is horrible to be in a war. If they shun you because you had to go to war, they do not "get" that this is how a country remains "Free" in a world where tyrants abound. Let us all just silently pray that war be ended so we can someday phase out the need for a "Veteran's Day".
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