I didn't post anything about Veteran's Day yesterday. I usually write a little about the history of the holiday, which has gone through quite a few changes since the guns fell silent at the end of World War One.
Instead, I thought about the people we're thanking. It gets to be a little too pro forma, a bit too much influenced by movies and TV, bullets flying and noble sacrifice on one hand, and a brusque "Thank you for your service" on the other. Service members are real men and women, working long hours for pay that varies from a bit low to, well, is there really ever adequate pay to jump out of an airplane at night into unknown and possibly hostile territory? Because some of those movie scenarios do happen for a few Service personnel. Others -- a lot of others -- do the dull, difficult stuff that it takes to keep a modern military on the job, in facilities that vary from cutting-edge to field-expedient to "should have been bulldozed long ago." And they do it. Not uncomplainingly; griping is an essential lubricant for the work. But they show up and they get it done, day after day.
Militaries don't run on BS and PR. It takes hands-on work and I am grateful to the men and women that do it. Taking one day a year to say "Thanks" feels preposterously inadequate.
Thanks Roberta.
ReplyDeleteA lot of us worked in the background in places that, hopefully, will never be shown in a documentary or news clip.
And sometimes it's a lot harder to stay back and monitor those going out into harms way than strapping on an airplane or putting your boots on the ground, because we know them, and it hurts when some don't come back.
One of the reasons I liked working with the Tomahawk system, is that my inputs and decisions to the target selection and intel process were not putting one of my brothers or sisters directly into harms way. (yes I now a lot can go wrong on the launch platform, but it ain't happened yet, and hopefully never will)