It's Veterans Day!
The banks are closed, schools are open and for the most part nobody thinks of it...it takes a back seat to Memorial Day because most people feel that they honor the same thing when in fact they don't...
Before I get into the difference, I would like to explain what I typically do the night before Veterans Day...well, I do almost the same thing the night before Memorial day...
What is that?
Well, what I typically do is find two or three military themed movies that I have in my DVD collection...In my collection, my wife and I have just about everything that you can think of...everything from The Deer Hunter to Full Metal Jacket...I have watched most of them hundreds of times because they all remind me of some experience that I had sometime in my military career...
This year, I decided to watch one movie that I hadn't watched in a year or so (Gardens of Stone) and a new movie that we picked up from Blockbuster (Home of the Brave).
The reason I picked these two movies is because they are about two totally different wars (Vietnam and Iraq) and they both deal mostly with life stateside during and after the characters war experience...Both of these films are not highly acclaimed but they are both realistic.
"Gardens of Stone"'s main character is a member of the Old Guard, they guard the tomb of the Unknown Soldier and bury war dead at Arlington cemetry...I relate to this movie because I was an Honor Guard member (they also conduct funeral details). This film deals with the main character's stateside life while in the Army before he goes to Vietnam and the events that take place after he is assigned there.
The next movie I picked was "Home of the Brave", it has some war scenes but it mainly deals with how the characters deal with blending back into civilian society after the Iraq war...I really liked this movie because it really deals with the personality changes that many veterans experience after being subjected to that environment and the how the adapt.
Even though I am a military Veteran, I am not a veteran of either of these wars...In fact, I am not a veteran of any war...The closest I came was working in the command post underground a few hundred miles away from Kuwait during Desert Shield and Desert Storm...yes, I got a medal for supporting it and others did too...
I also had some friends perish in Kuwait, Iraq and Afghanistan...I remember them on Memorial Day...and Veterans Day too...
In fact, I remember all of my military friends and all veterans on Veterans Day because that's what this day is about!
This is the day that we remember all veterans, whether they are living or not. Whether they have served in a war zone or not...
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