Don't Offer This Veteran Thanks, Or a Meal At A Crappy Restaurant

[SeattleVet]

72. What I posted on Facebook a while ago (with a few ideas stolen from this thread):

I don't know about others, but I sometimes get a little uncomfortable when someone thanks me for my service. I consider my service to have been a duty, and you don't need to thank someone for doing their duty. I served for 12 years. At times I was even stationed in the same hemisphere where there was some shooting going on. Both of my sisters also served, and did our father, grandfather, uncles, etc. (Sometimes it seems like our family will fight with pretty much *anyone*!) It was just what we did. It was our job. For most of my time it was pretty much like a regular 9-to-5 job, except we wore funny clothes and gas masks and carried M16's sometimes, and wound up sleeping in the mud from time to time (except in the Air Force it was usually a sleeping bag on an air mattress on a cot in a tent with a kerosene heater - the mud was mostly outside the tent).

Do you want to *really* thank a veteran for Veterans Day? Then sit down and write a letter and get on the phone tomorrow to your Senators and Representatives and demand better services and benefits for all veterans. Tell them to stop cutting food stamps to the hundreds of thousands of veterans and their families that need them, and to start making a priority of increasing funding in other areas of assistance to vets. Putting a 'Support the Troops' bumper sticker on an SUV and then voting to cut funding for the VA, homeless vets services, PTSD assistance and intervention, or food assistance seems kind of backward.

Your greatest support of veterans would be to insure that we elect people who do not feel the need to create so many wounded veterans. Work to get these men and women back home and out of harm's way.

In the meantime check out the volunteer opportunities at your local VA hospital, and see what donations they are looking for (they usually need books, playing cards, and personal care items). *That* would be a huge way of saying, "Thank you", and help in creating a happy Veterans Day for so many who have served and given more than most. Actions are SO much stronger than words, and over the past 10 years or so "Thanks for your service" almost seems to have been reduced to the equivalent of 'Have a nice day".

(End of rant!)