Remembering what veterans did — and still do

As a 3-year-old during World War II, I sidled up to a young soldier, timidly tugged on his pants leg and asked him, “Are you my daddy?”

My embarrassed mother apologized and explained that my father had been drafted before I was old enough to recognize him.

For a long time, I thought that anyone in uniform — police officers, mailmen, bus drivers — was a family member, because all my uncles were in some branch of the military. The youngest quit high school midway through his senior year to enlist in the Navy, where his ship supported operations in Europe and later off the Japanese coast.

My godfather dodged German air attacks on a tarmac in England, where he repaired damaged American planes. One uncle survived the near sinking of his merchant marine vessel. Another uncle, while slogging through a Burmese jungle, was injured by a sniper’s bullet which ripped through his neck and lodged in his shoulder. He spent months recuperating in an army hospital.

Successive generations served selflessly in other wars. My brother-in-law received Purple Hearts after twice being wounded in Vietnam. He returned home physically intact but left his emotional health in ‘Nam. Until his death, he was haunted by nightmares, hiding in closets and under the bed to escape the Viet Cong.

Ironically, our former draft-dodging president declined participation in a ceremony honoring American and Allied war dead in a French cemetery because it was raining, and he didn’t think it necessary to honor “suckers and losers."

These veterans considered it an honor to courageously serve their country and democracy around the world, and they deserve our respect and appreciation on this Veterans Day.

– Mary F. Williams, Kendall

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