Lest we forget.

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Salute to you all !!!! THANKS !!!!!!

Thanks for remembering and reminding, Donny!


R.

Your very welcome Russ....I myself an Army Veteran & proud to serve my country. I performed & sang a wonderful Armed Forces Show at a facility Monday afternoon and at the end I did
"God Bless America" WWII Vets and many others from all wars were standing and crying as they sung,.. it was a a special moment and salute to our real heroes!

Every Veteran's Day for the past two decades I had the honor and privilege to perform at an upscale Jewish retirement community, Atrium Village. One of the residents there always came to see me every time I performed, which is normally once per month, and on at least three holidays, including Veteran's Day. During the Veteran's Day performance it's pretty much just a ceremonial thing, the reading of Flanders Field, I play Taps, God Bless America and all 4 service hymns. This year, unfortunately, that resident was no longer with us - he had recently passed away.

He was a Major in the Hungarian Army during WWII, captured by the Germans and interned at Auschwitz. After three years on a labor gang, he health began to fail horribly, he said he was down to under 100 pounds, and stood 6'4" tall. The day before he was to be executed, the American army liberated Auschwitz, he spent a year in a hospital recovering, and immigrated to the United States in the late 1940s. When I met him a decade ago, he showed me the serial number the Germans tattooed on his forearm - it was somewhat unnerving to say the least. He was a wonderful person to talk with and I will miss him dearly.

Monday, I met a lady that was interned at Buchenwald, and also liberated by the American army a few days before she was scheduled to be gassed. She said that if WWII were fought by today's rules of engagement America would have lost the war. Super nice lady and she said she is eternally grateful to the GIs that rescued her from what would have been certain death. She was the sole survivor of her entire family and she too had the arm tattoo.

I served aboard the U.S.S. Newport News for four years, entering the service in 1957 at age 17. I was sent ashore in Famagusta, Cyprus during the Cypriot Revolt as part of a security force to quell riots, then searched for survivors and dug bodies from the rubble at Agadir, Morocco after the earthquake in 1960 that killed 12,000 people. Unfortunately, that gallant ship was cut up for scrap metal at a ship yard in New Orleans in 1993.

Gary

... Just now returned from doing a salute to vets show. A local apartment complex hosted about a dozen veterans from the local state veterans home for lunch and show. Very nice affair ... very different from when I was discharged in 1967 and vets were ignored and at times vilified by the anti-war movement folks ...

Jerry, the country should be collectively ashamed at how Vietnam era vets were treated when they returned home.

R.

Russ I remember it very well in 1969

Today's salute to vets with flag draped SD1Plus ...

We owe vets EVERYTHING. America and Australia fought together in Vietnam ... it was one of the toughest wars.

DNJ,

Yes I too remember it well and the spitting on us as we walked through the terminals on coming home.

I still see homeless vets under those Interstate Overpasses.

I served in Korea and stayed in through Vietnam and I don't regret a bit of it and would do it all again for our country.

I hear you Billy thankyou for your service!!

I was in the US Army Reserves during that time and fortunately did not see any action, but I could not believe the treatment the Nam vets got...

I never could understand the lack of respect ...Vietnam vets got..

My best buddies are examples...

Al came home with shrapnel throughout his body...disabled for life..
Terry didn't make it home..his helicopter went down..

My brother made it home...his marriage didn't survive..

Another friend Mike suffered emotionally and physically from agent orange..he passed away 2 years ago..

I have seen so many Vietnam vets that never recovered, and wonder why the people turned their backs ...Hopefully that will change before the rest pass on too..

An Australian Vietnam vet I knew slept every night with a hand gun under his pillow. One day his live in girl friend went to the store only to come home to find he had hung himself. So very sad. He just wasn't the same after he came home from Vietnam.

Fran,

One always has hope, but when I travel, I still see those guys living under the "Overpass" and that word describes what has happened in their lives and "Jane Fonda" has been embraced and even loved now by our brainless Hollywood loving public.

Sorry - I know this has been beat to death - just need to vent a bit - it helps some.

Bill G

If we want to truly honor our vets, and even more importantly, those still serving, perhaps instead of blindly following politicians while they rattle their (well, ours, really) sabers to distract us from one more attempt to cripple our manufacturing base or cut needed public programs while they line the pockets of the wealthy even further, we start to demand less involvement in places where our presence will NEVER improve things.

That we send our young overseas to hell holes that will never become model democracies (most of them are corrupt oligarchies barely any less brutal than those we deposed), and we KNOW they never will before we send them out there is the truest display of what we REALLY care about. It ain't the troops...

I respect the troops, and the hardships they endure, but perhaps we would serve them better by BRINGING THEM HOME. There is no Great War any more. There is no Axis Powers to fight. There are just self serving politicians and a big stick to wave around when they want jingoistic voting. That doesn't honor anybody...

Vietnam was the watershed, the last war we forced children to become men (and women) in the charnel house of mechanized warfare, to try to prop up a corrupt government (so corrupt, the people WANTED communism! How bad do things have to get for the populace before that seems like a good idea?!) with the bodies of our children. And we all KNEW it. And we still let it happen.

No wonder we were embarrassed when the poor boys came home. We knew in our hearts WE did this to them. Who could easily face this? So we turned our backs.

Sadly, we are doing the same thing today. Iraq and Afghanistan vets are being denied health care, or forced into a system so overloaded and underfunded (by the same politicians that sent them there), the news coverage is basically zero despite the war being still active, we are repeating history. If we care, BRING THEM ALL HOME NOW!

I am sorry for this rant, and I know perhaps there are a few here that don't like this view aired, but it is something I believe in with all my soul. We have no place over there.

Let us honor the vets by ensuring there are fewer in future.

I could nit-pick some of the details, but this heart-felt op-ed piece is excellently written and pretty much "dead-on", in my opinion.

It's easy to see that, "warts and all", our friend Diki is a caring, thoughtful soul. I' for one, am really glad he's here.

Russ