Veterans Day 2013Today, we honor our veterans, the men and women who have served in the armed forces. The birth of Veterans Day dates back to 1919, a year after the end of World War I, and it was originally known as Armistice Day.

Yesterday, veterans marched in Belleville’s Veterans Day parade. Today in Montclair, veterans will be honored at an observance in Edgemont Park.

Rutgers Today shares the story of Juan Hernandez, who will enjoy his first Thanksgiving home after three years of active military duty with the U.S. Air Force.

Private First Class Norman George
Private First Class Norman George
Today, I honor my father, Private First Class Norman George, who served in the Korean War. Who Whom do you honor today?

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9 replies on “Veterans Day 2013”

  2. My father & mother, both vets of WW2. He was a sgt in Army Corps of Engineers laying pipeline for Gen Patton. She was a Navy WAVE in supply corps.

  3. Also:
    Nipper Ashenfelter, Army Air Corps
    Jim Lacey, USAF
    Bob Hayes, US Army
    Jim O’Brien, US Navy, Submarine Service
    Gabe Arnett, USCG, rescue diver

  5. From various times, and from uncles to cousins…2 Marine pilots, an Army pilot, a Navy astronaut, one who was a future nephew in the Marines had he made it out of Iraq; and my prayers for 2 veterans in training, a nephew Marine and my son in the AF.

  6. Mostly today I think of several poor unlucky shits, fellow draftees mainly, with whom I served who never in fact got to become “veterans.”

  7. Today should be a day to honor every person who ever served their country honorably in war, believing that they were fighting the good cause. Today should also be a day to honor those who objected to war, people like Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela (during the latter part of his life).

    Today is a day to be reminded how senseless war is. As one world leader put it a few years ago, today is a day “we apologize for the terrible deeds we have done to one another and ask forgiveness.”

    Or as one extraordinary soldier put it the day that began this annual remembrance of the tragedy of war: “So the curtain fell over that tortured country of unmarked graves and unburied fragments of men murdered and massacred for the guilty. The poor man for the sake of the greed of the already rich. the man of no authority for made the victim of the man who had gathered importance and wished to keep it.”

    No one who has led a life of privilege and used that privilege to seek private wealth, who never wore a uniform or expressed the folly of war, should be made the Master of Ceremonies for those who did serve. This is certainly not a moment of “extraordinary leadership.” It is a moment for self-aggrandizement paid for by the suffering of others.

  8. Those are kind of high-falutin’ sentiments you’re expressing there, idratherbe… To the point, I felt, of near-meaninglessness.

    It also helps maybe to mention the names of those you’re quoting.

  9. @cathar Perhaps I would have expressed your contribution here differently, but I did feel what you said was meaningful and appropriate.

    You can easily find the names behind the quotations. Sometimes words do well to stand on their own.

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