Today is a day to take a little time away from the family barbecue at the in-laws and think for a few minutes about the poor bastards that didn't make it home.
The picture that probably comes to mind is some guy heroically charging down into the mouths of cannons armed with his trusty rifle. I suppose there are a lot of guys that did that and died in the process, but that's not anywhere near all of it. Sometimes it's not that dramatic.
Take Lanny Baldwin, the guy up the street from me that got drafted when I was a kid. He was in a Jeep that rolled in Korea and he never made it home.
How about the simple fellow that was taking chow up to the guys and managed to get blown up by some sort of booby trap. Or the guy that just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and got killed in the process.
Depending on what my instincts tell me, later on this evening I may put a bayonet on my Garand and stick it into the lawn and put an old steel pot on top of it. I'll sit there and watch the passing traffic of pet walkers and watch their reactions and body language. Most of them actually appreciate it, some of them shy away from it and I have received a number of comments, mostly favorable but some stupid. As we all know, there is no shortage of stupidity on the planet.
One year a passing man asked me it it was a real rifle. I told him it was and that it was locked, loaded, a round in the chamber and the safety was off and that he should tread lightly whille passing it so that it would not jump out of the ground and start shooting people indiscriminately.
I got an expected visit from the police for that one. He rolled up and asked me what the rifle and steel pot was doing there.
I told him that it was there to give a few people something to think about and that it was always in sight and that it was going to go back inside when I decided to go in or just before I popped my first beer. He nodded, told me he'd take care of things and drove off.
A lot of people out there just don't seem to get it. Our freedoms are not free. They are damned costly. They cost us heavily in both money and lives. It is only right to stop and think about it once in a while and while the troops are always on MY mind, there are a lot of stupid people out there that do not have a clue.
It is only fitting that we take a little time out to think about the poor bastard that went out and paid for our way of life with his own life.
I am not going to dedicate today to the guy that went out there and tried to be a hero and stupidly traded his life in a foolish attempt to win a piece of colored cloth to wear on his uniform.
Today I am going to give thanks to the people that simply lost their lives simply doing their jobs, either by enemy action, accident or disease. I'm going to dedicate today to the citizen-soldier that, knowing he was taking a chance, went off to war, didn't look back and for whatever reason didn't make it back home.
my other blog is: http://officerpiccolo.blogspot.com/ http://piccolosbutler.blogspot.com/
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