Veteran's Day

[pegkerr]

This post is being made in honor of all who have served in uniform (including my Dad, who was a lieutenant in the Navy) and especially to all who paid the final price, laying down their lives at their country's call. Our nation is even now at war, and I grieve for those in the forefront of the conflict. I pray that President-elect Obama will do his utmost to bring about a peaceful resolution in the days to come.






Do you have a veteran in the family, or are you a veteran yourself? Tell me about his or her service. Take the time to thank him or her it.

Again, thanks, Dad.

Comments

[hobbitbabe.livejournal.com]

My grandpa was a sapper in the Signals Corps in the Canadian Army in WWI.
He was probably at Vimy Ridge. He never wanted to talk about it, so I
know very little. He did bring home a Belgian flag signed by grateful
Belgians.

[livsmama.livejournal.com]

We had a discussion about Veteran's Day at the breakfast table this morning. My family is heavy with Veterans. Both my grandfathers were in WWII, my dad was in Vietnam and my brother spent 10 years in the air force including time in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

[lilisonna.livejournal.com]

My father was an MP in the Army.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

My boyfriend Adrian was a medic in the Army for four years, hated it, and then joined the Air Force, also as a medic, for ten years. He's still in the reserves. Sometimes we lie in bed and he tells me about helicopters. ;)

My grandfather was stationed in New Guinea during WWII, where he tracked personnel records via "IBM machines," which were early computers which ran on punch-cards. Each one was about ten feet square and had less computing power than a modern scientific calculator.

[primroseburrows.livejournal.com]

My dad was an underage kid when he tried, several times, to enlist in the (US) Navy during WWII. He was fifteen when he finally succeeded, and he was stationed on a ship. When his commanding officer found out he basically told my dad that he didn't know whether to throw him out on his ear or pin a medal on him. He stayed in the Navy, and stayed for Korea, also, before finally leaving because it was too stressful for my mother.

In the last few years of his life, he went back to the Navy again, this time doing quality control for them. He wasn't IN the Navy then, but he worked for them, and I always thought that he would have beeen a career Navy guy if life had allowed it. He was buried with full Naval honours and a 21-gun salute.

[thistlerose.livejournal.com]

My grandpa was too young for WWI and too old for WWII. My dad was excused from the draft for health reasons. But my little brother's going through officer's training right now, and I worry, even though he's only in Virginia, because that's what big sisters do.

[wild-patience.livejournal.com]

Both my parents served in the Navy in WWII.

My mother was a Wave, stationed at Mare Island outside Vallejo. (SF Bay Area.) She just found out a few years ago that the big secret project that they were working on was the bomb -- they were storing parts there.

My father was in the SeaBees (the Navy's construction battalion), stationed in the South Pacific. He never talked about it. My mother said that when they met, he was on a medical discharge, having had a complete physical collapse due to spinal meningitis and other things. He lost a good chunk of his hearing. He suffered from post-traumatic stress syndrome, which didn't have a name back then. When they were living in Hawaii and Hurricane Iniki struck, he had flashbacks to the war.

[crowley.livejournal.com]

Both my grandfathers, Army and Air Force. I had a great-uncle who served in Vietnam, also Air Force I think. My dad did 20 years (Air Force) and I grew up a military brat. One of his brothers was also in the Air Force and served during the first Gulf War. He got out not too long after that.

My boyfriend did 4 years in the Navy, got out to go to college but joined the Army Reserve, where he ended up going to Iraq twice (and was wounded both times). Now he's in the National Guard and set to deploy again to Afghanistan in April. I'm pretty much a nervous wreck over this.

Lots of vets, no casualties

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

My father was in the army during WWII. Not unusual - I think most men of that generation served in some capacity. My mother was also a WWII vet, which is somewhat less common: a Navy Wave. Neither saw combat. My Dad was drafted and ended up as a recruiting sergeant. His favorite war story was that he processed Isaac Asimov into the Army (he was a serious science fiction fan, and thought this was pretty cool). My mother was stationed in Boulder, Colorado, of all the weird places for a Navy base, learning Japanese. This made both of them eligible for VA benefits, which they made good use of after the war. So on the whole, it worked out well for them.

My maternal grandfather was in the Army in WWI. He volunteered enthusiastically, and was quite disappointed that he didn't get to go overseas until the war was pretty much over so he never saw combat either. From what I hear, he was lucky.

I'm sure there have been many other military men in my family tree, but the only other two I know about explicitly are Great Great Grandpa Bates, who fought heroically in the Civil War (Union side) and some remote ancestor named "James McKinstrie" who made me eligible to join the Daughters of the American Revolution [which I have not done, incidentally. But my mother made a point of making sure I knew I was eligible. She never felt motivated to join the organization either, but it was Very Important to one of her aunts, so she passed it on].

McKinstrie was mustered out of the service after 11 days due to illness, apparently contracted while he was traveling to the front. That's about all we know about him.

"Grandpa Bates" and one of his brothers got so sick with typhoid that they were shipped home to die without even being given proper discharge papers. They looked so terrible that their father didn't recognize them at first when he went to pick them up at the train station. But Gr-Gr-Gr-Grandpa was a "Vermont country doctor" of considerable skill and nursed them both back to health. The family always said that Grandpa Bates' health was broken by the war, but considering that he lived well into his '80's I'd take that with a grain of salt.

And, of course, my husband is a veteran of the Vietnam War. He registered as a Conscientious Objector, but they drafted him anyway and made him a medic. He says it was a lot like M.A.S.H. except that the doctors weren't as funny and the nurses weren't as pretty.

[aaoconnor.livejournal.com]

My dad was too young for WWI and too old for WWII. During WWII he stayed stateside and worked on construction projects for the government. The biggest one he worked on was the plant in Hanford, WA where they developed and built part of the Bomb. I have a certificate that he received from the War Department in recognition of his contribution to the war effort. Right after the war he was in Guam building airfields.

Yesterday I saw a news item about a group doing some interesting work for deceased veterans. www.miap.us

The Missing in America Project contacts funeral homes and other facilities in an attempt to locate cremated remains of veterans that have been unclaimed. They handle all the arrangements to get them buried in national cemeteries with full honors. So far they have been able to get over 300 veterans interred with their fellow veterans all over the country.

[nmalfoy.livejournal.com]

My father was in the Air Force. He was a pilot, flying the huge C-130 cargo planes. He wanted to be a fighter pilot, but he was too stocky for the cockpit (I got my short and stocky from him). He flew all over the world, and even now I have some carved wooden cats he brought back from Bangkok. I was born on an Air Force base and I'm proud of it. He left the Air Force when I was about 3 or 4, because my mother didn't want to be a military life (biggest mistake she ever made in her life was making him leave). He went to the Air Force academy too.

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

My Dad's a Korea-era USAF veteran. I think it might have been a really good thing for him, after growing up kicking around the foster system. A place to belong and all that.

My mother's brother was a draftee in Vietnam. He's 60 this year, diagnosed a year ago with terminal adreno-cortical cancer. He was supposed to be dead by now, but is mraculously still feeling pretty good, with no symptoms at all from the cancer - he's had only slight issues from the chemo, though one of the sugeries took him a while to recover from. Cancer doesn't run in our family, and he eats well, has never smoked, gets a fair amount of exercise. Although he wasn't in combat (chaplain's assistant) it wouldn't surprise me if the cancer stemmed from exposure to chemicals in Vietnam. Of course it could just be random chance.