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Showing Original Post only (View all)Can I ask a Memorial Day favor? [View all]
I'm a veteran - Cold War submariner.
Can you please remember that this holiday is not to honor veterans, but to honor our brothers who fell in the line of duty.
There's a thing called stolen valor. To most vets that I know, it's a pretty big deal. Speaking for myself, when someone who knows I served thanks me for my service on Memorial Day, I get this little twinge of guilt because we have another day for that in the fall. It's really just a little thing, but if it happens to me, I suspect it happens to others. Especially those who unlike me, actually saw their brother fall or found them afterward.
To me this day is really about the guys who fell on Normandy beaches, who fell in Gettysburg (both sides), who were manning Scorpion, from Concord to Iraq and all those places in between we may never remember.
It's also about those who were treated so shitty, who died at the hands of the VA denying cancer clusters from contaminated base water, denying Agent Orange leaving my brothers to suffer a lingering death, those who froze to death over the many winters because they were homeless, those who die in jail because PTSD landed them there.
The first group I mentioned, there's little we can do. The second group, well we could change that if we can pull together.