First up is a story about a flag memorial for the fallen in Iraq. 

The memorial was placed by an person who does not support the war, but wants to memorialize the troops fallen.   To those who preach that you cannot oppose the war and stillsupport the troops, these people may be the exception to the rule. As I listened to the story of how their memorial was vandalized by other anti war protesters and I felt nothing but their hurt and sincerity.

There is a right and a wrong way to do things.  Destroying someone elese hard work is stupid.

And the other story is related to my Veterans day post.  In it, I noted that the WW2 veterans are dwindling.  But I neglected the real dwinding class of veterans: WWI vets.

And then there were one…

Frank Buckles is the last surviving American veteran of World War One.  Two others who joined the military during the war but had not yet completed basic training when the war ended also survive.  This past weekend might have seen the last Veterans Day with a living veteran of the Great War that Veterans Day was originally meant to honor.

It’s hard for anyone, I imagine, to say for certain what it is that we will loose when Frank Buckles dies. It’s not that World War I will then become history; it’s been history for a long time now. But it will become a different kind of history, the kind we can’t quite touch anymore, the kind that will, from that point on, always be just beyond our grasp somehow. We can’t stop that from happening. But we should, at least, take notice of it.

God help us.

The story continues:

Over There — and Gone Forever