I have been on tap to write this Saturday post on this Veterans Day for a while. I have spent time reading individual stories of LIVING veterans. This day is about all those who have served but focusing on the living. I read stories about Gunnery Sergeant Jessie Jane Duff, PFC Marie Daume born in a prison in Siberia, Tennessee Congressman Mark Green who is also a physician and Army Major, and probably at least one hundred others. I also read posts from years past. It was when I read a post that our Kate did nearly a decade ago that it hit me. There are too stories many to tell only one.

We are in increasingly dangerous times. Military recruiting is floundering. Except for the Marines who are meeting their recruiting goals. Still that means that fewer YOUNG men and women are willing to sign a check to our goat rodeo of a government up to and including their lives. We owe them so much. They live in moldy barracks. They could make more as a barista since the average Private makes just over $11.00 per hour. And, yet there are young people who still sign up to serve. To carry heavy rucks in all weather. Too train constantly and continue their education. To go where they are told.

Stop and think about that today, November 11 at 11 o’clock in the morning. The generations who have slogged through trenches, faced cannons and hand grenades and who have cleared tunnels so that we can rest easy. Why November 11 at 11:00? It began with the end of World War I: