Today is Memorial Day or Veteran's Day here in the US. It is a holiday to honor the 646,596 military personnel killed in various wars and the 539,000 military personnel who died in war zones due to "non-combat causes." The total is 1,185,596 men and women lost from 1776 to 2023. This is a staggering total. Let us put this into perspective. In World War II, Russia waged the Great Patriotic War against the Nazis. Some 27 million Russian men, women, and children died in that horrible war. Some 10.2 million Chinese were killed resisting the Japanese in World War II.
A number of our readers have served in the armed forces of various
countries. There is a small group of us who have been in a war zone and have
actually been "under fire." Haim and Sarah Feigenbaum, Claud Knoesen,
Sue Digre's sons, and I are a part of that small group.
If you go to the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, D.C., you
will find the names of four of my high school classmates on the wall. They were
killed in Vietnam. Had a North Vietnamese gunner did not make a mistake in setting
the fuse on an artillery shell for airburst instead of impact, I would have my
name on that granite wall. I would have been dead for 52 years. Those of
you who have known me a long time, know that I am a very lucky man.
I am going to leave you with a thought to ponder. Elena has a
friend for decades named Patricia. She has two sons. When one son reached 12
years of age, we gave him an invitation that many young people would be
enthusiastic to accept. We offered to fly him from Argentina to the US. We
offered him free room and board. We offered to get him a free high school
education. If he did well, we offered to finance his college education.
Much to her surprise, he rejected the offer. He made a
profound comment that sticks with me after all these years as follows:
"I do not want to live in the U.S. It is a country
constantly involved in a war."
No comments:
Post a Comment