Veterans

Hey all. Another music-related post is on tap for Sunday. For today, even though Veterans Day is technically tomorrow, I'm putting up my annual tribute here.

Thanks and respect to all.

To family and friends, spouses, mothers, fathers, partners, sons and daughters, to everyone who…

Gave up time in their lives to wear non-fashionable clothes and clunky boots, stand or sit for hours or days or weeks chilled to the bone or baking in the heat, sorted mail, drove a tank, fixed the damn tank more than they drove the tank, did more push-ups and pull-ups than humanly possible, drank way too much, learned to play poker, played in the woods and laughed, crawled through the darkest woods and tried not to crap your pants, experienced a boredom you felt would never end, watched the world around you erupt and covered your head and wished hard for that boredom again.

Cried for friends you’d known for only a microsecond of their lifetime and would never see again, had friends cry over you, jumped out of planes, jumped lazily out of a plane and rolled along the back of its fuselage, learned about the range of human nature by experiencing it directly for two to three or four or five years, or all of your adult life, and have never forgotten the good, the bad, the ugly and the things you did, and you saw, and you’ll never quite understand.

To family and friends, and their spouses, mothers, fathers, partners, sons and daughters, to everyone who, in the course of their lives, lost family and friends, mothers, fathers, partners, sons and daughters.

For whatever you feel it was or wasn’t, for whatever you took with you or left behind. For knowing that when you’re in it, there is no partisanship, save for the everlasting connection between us because we were there, no matter where there was.

For understanding that there will always be people known as veterans, and for feeling the mix of pride and sadness knowing that there will always be veterans.

For all of it, from another one of you (that would be me), here’s to us, to those around us, and to those we wish were still here.

Spec 5/Sergeant Mike Harkins, 4/68 Armor, 82nd Airborne Division, ’72-’75