dave in boca

VETERANS DAY

November Eleventh has changed over the many years since the 11th Hour of the 11th of the 11th month of 1918.

As a little kid, I can remember when "Armistice Day" as it was called then brought out flags everywhere on lawns and streets to commemorate the fallen heroes of the First World War, the Second World War, and the Korean War. I can recall reading about the last living veterans of the American Civil War and the Spanish-American War. Their names were in the Milwaukee Journal, a paper which paid much attention to the patriotism of its readers.

Since Vietnam, I have a sense that the country as a whole has regarded its military veterans in a different light, although still paying them the honor of regard for their service. Of course, localities celebrate their veterans in various ways. When we lived in the northern suburbs of Chicago in the '90's, there was a color guard at the gazebo in Glencoe near the train station and a list of names of local residents killed in recent conflicts was read aloud. Now that the family lives in Boca Raton, the day seems to pass without event. Whether this is because of the anonymity of the South Florida civic landscape or the indifference of the many municipalities or my own failure to spot where the events will be held, the relative absence of ceremony is a void.

Today I did discuss Vietnam , where I spent the better halves of 1970 and 1971 with my friend Lou, the bloodwork specialist at my doc's office. Lou is a former Navy Corpsman and we had a discussion of former wars. I was a State Dept. FSO seconded to CORDS in Vietnam and during the Gulf War, managed to get into Saudi Arabia as a journalist.

A lot of memories flooded in as I told Lou about talking to Caryle Murphy, a Washington Post reporter who later got a Pulitzer for her reporting on the runup to the Gulf War [the chivalric "Desert Shield"] while a Scud came into Riyadh in plain view from where we were. Patriot missiles hurtled skyward and it was Independence Day for just a minute in the Saudi night. [The Scud hit the "Passport Building" and killed a hapless night watchman.]

I guess all recollections of conflicts get condensed into a few episodes when years peel away the persistence of memory. My teenage daughter does continue to show interest in my personal experiences, and I do have an interview of myself by Judy Woodruff of the [then] MacNeil/Lehrer Report on tape which PBS sent to my wife after it aired. I have not seen my questions at the Daily Briefing which my brother Dick, a video technician, recorded and put together on a single VHS tape. Just never looked back, I guess. One of these days..........

With the Second Oil War tangled in controversy, I guess we continue to wonder as Americans whether the old Latin saying still applies:

DULCE ET DECORUM EST PRO PATRIA MORI.