Veteran's Day

I noticed over there on CNN that some bunch of government people were holding a meeting to discuss the homeless Veterans. Which ones, I'd like to know? And exactly where the hell have the committee members been since around 1980 when Ronald Reagan decided it violated the human rights of the mentally ill if we gave them food, shelter and medication so he turned them all out to live in a subway tunnel in New York?

I mention this because a significant number of them were Viet Nam Veterans. You remember Viet Nam, it was that other big mistake of a war we used to get rid of people we didn't like back there in the 60's.

There was a disproportionate number of black soldiers on the front lines, for instance, thus guaranteeing that there would be a lot fewer people yelling at the government about getting to use the same drinking fountain as the rest of us and not get lynched unto the fourth generation.

Those are my veterans. My Mom, a sweet person whose father was a World War II veteran, makes it a point to shake the hand of any soldier she sees and thank him for keeping her safe. It's a wonderful gesture and a good idea, it puts a human face on what you're doing there when you wake up in Iraq.

No one shook the hand of my Vets. I'm not sure they were actually fighting anything like terrorism, it might have been (the ominous threat of) Communism. Which no one could exactly define, but we knew was very bad. Something like a red alert on the terrorism scale. No one knows what that means, either.

Today we hear a lot about doing like my Mom and shaking the hands of the guys who come home. There was a suggested gesture for greeting my vets, too. You were supposed to spit on them and scream "Babykiller!" at them, even if they had been drafted and would just as soon not have gone to hell for a tour or two.

And a hell of a lot of people were ready to make the gesture, too. It was the politically correct of it's time.

Sometimes in parades you see my guys, the ones who can come. They wear Jungle camo fatigues, are usually unshaven and make a point to keep what's left of their hair in a long gray ponytail. If their smiles are a little wry, it's because they had to wait twenty years or so for their first parade and despite the fact that we applaud them now, they haven't forgotten how we met them when they deplaned in 1968.

On this Veteran's Day, I would like to tell you what defined "war" for me when I was ten, and what still defines it for me today.

It is the memory of the flag draped casket of Larry Swiggum, who won a purple heart which did not seem to me to be adequate compensation for his orphaned brothers and sisters, but was the highest honor the government could confer, so at least it was nice they tried.

It was a closed casket because there wasn't enough of him left to look at.


In Memory of Larry Swiggum, God grant you rest in peace and give you what we could not, life.