Sundays with Ron Rozelle by Rozelle Ron;

Author:Rozelle, Ron;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: TCU Press
Published: 2012-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Lest we forget

The construction of a veterans’ memorial has been a hot topic lately. Not so much about whether or not one is needed—after all, being against a veterans’ memorial would be sort of like coming out against racial tolerance and world peace—but about what sort of thing it would end up being.

Now, I’m a veteran myself, so I perk up and pay attention when this subject arises. After all, this is likely to be the only memorial that will ever be put up to yours truly other than a tombstone. And I’ll gladly do without that one for as long as possible.

Uncle Sam sent his greetings to me in the early ’70s, informing me I’d be spending two years on his meal ticket. I was in college at the time, though hardly on the Dean’s List. In fact, the only list the dean had which my name might have been on would have been of students in need of a little pep talk concerning grades. But the Selective Service System got a look at those grades first, and I ended up raising my hand and reciting the oath that delivered me into the Army of the United States.

The Vietnam War was in its last gasps, so I ended up in Germany, which was fine by me. I was all of twenty, had never wandered very far away from East Texas, and there I was deep in the Black Forest in Bavaria. I was a clerk–typist in a machine shop, saw enough sights and learned enough history to make me more well-rounded and drank enough rich German beer to make me physically so well-rounded that my family had trouble recognizing me when I got home.

Not all who served—draftees or by choice—fared nearly as well. Believe me, I know that. But even those of us who were never in harm’s way pulled on the uniform every day and put our lives on hold for a while. Every veteran everywhere deserves to be acknowledged. They did their bit. They might very well have bellyached about it and might have resented every day of it. But they stepped up to the plate.

And far too many, of course, have been in harm’s way.

I don’t need to go into the sacrifices that countless American veterans have made throughout our history. I’ve strolled among rows upon rows of white tombstones at the cemetery at Omaha Beach in Normandy, most of which bear the same date: June 6, 1944. Most of which contain the bodies of kids barely older than the ones I teach in my high school senior English class. And I have seen the flags flapping in the breeze along the streets in my town way too often lately, indicating that one of our own died in a war that is currently a topic of hot debate and is now fodder for presidential campaigns.

But here’s what we all ought to try to remember. The debate on that—or any—war, or the concept of war in general,

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