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

BY any conceivable measure, Frank Buckles has led an extraordinary life. Born on a farm in Missouri in February 1901, he saw his first automobile in his hometown in 1905, and his first airplane at the Illinois State Fair in 1907. At 15 he moved on his own to Oklahoma and went to work in a bank; in the 1940s, he spent more than three years as a Japanese prisoner of war. When he returned to the United States, he married, had a daughter and bought a farm near Charles Town, W. Va., where he lives to this day. He drove a tractor until he was 104.

..

At the end of his documentary “The War,” Ken Burns notes that 1,000 World War II veterans are dying every day. Their passing is being observed at all levels of American society; no doubt you have heard a lot about them in recent days. Fortunately, World War II veterans will be with us for some years yet. There is still time to honor them. But the passing of the last few veterans of the First World War is all but complete, and has gone largely unnoticed here.

Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised. Almost from the moment the armistice took effect, the United States has worked hard, it seems, to forget World War I; maybe that’s because more than 100,000 Americans never returned from it, lost for a cause that few can explain even now. The first few who did come home were given ticker-tape parades, but most returned only to silence and a good bit of indifference

Go there, and read the whole article.  Then stop for a moment and remember.

Trackposted to Outside the Beltway, Perri Nelson’s Website, third world county, Pirate’s Cove, Stuck On Stupid, The Pink Flamingo, Big Dog’s Weblog, CORSARI D’ITALIA, Right Voices, Public Domain Clip Art, The Yankee Sailor, and Gone Hollywood, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

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