This time we salute you

We soon will celebrate Veteran’s Day.  On the calendar it’s just for a day, but we celebrate our veterans 365 days a year.

There’s hardly a family in the country that doesn’t have some ties to our military forces.

My immediate family has ties to three military branches, army, navy, and air corps.

My father was in the army during World War I, getting in as soon as he was old enough, rather late in the war. He spent most of his army time in Minneapolis, where he met and married my mother.

My three brothers all served overseas in World War II. 

My oldest brother, Richard, was in an MP escort guard unit and helped transport Italian prisoners to camps in the U.S. He later served with his unit into Germany. After the war he returned home on the Queen Mary, which had been converted into a transport vessel.

My middle brother, David, was a clerk in the air force attached to MacArthur’s command. He was present when the Japanese command signed the articles of surrender.

My brother, Robert, was a few years older than I was and enlisted in the navy when he was 17.

He took his initial training at Farragut and served on several small vessels in the Pacific. His ship landed at Iwo just a few minutes after the famous flag incident on Mt. Suribachi.

He was on a seaplane tender ship at Okinawa when the Japanese launched their Kamikaze attack, sinking 34 ships and damaging scores more.

He later said that he was lucky being on a smaller ship. Japanese pilots went after the bigger ships.

After the surrender, my brother David visited Robert aboard his ship in Tokyo Harbor.

They rarely talked about their experiences. I have picked up a few things from letters they wrote to me.

I missed the war by the three years, only 15 when the war was over, but I closely followed the news from both the European and Pacific zones.

But the thing that touched me was when I visited the graveyard where those who died building the bridge over the River Kwai were buried. I was also deeply touched when I visited our national cemetery at Arlington. On the same trip, I walked the wall of the Vietnam Memorial. It struck home since I visited the Vietnam war zone on three occasions.

That’s why Veteran’s Day is all year long for me.

Know a veteran? Then indeed you travel in esteemed company.