I have no idea what to title this

The other night at church we had a chili cook-off (adults made chili) and dessert contest (kids made dessert). At our table sat a guy that I've seen come to church several times with a cami jacket & several pins/ribbons. Really nice guy, soft spoken, probably about my dad's age.

I happened to notice Vietnam bars on a ring that he was wearing so I asked him about it.
"____, are you a Vietnam veteran?"
"Yeah....how'd you know?"
"I saw your ring, noticed the bars."
"Your eyes are good. Most people don't."
"Well, I just want to say thanks, because vets don't get nearly enough thanks."
"You're one of the few people to say it."

WHAT?! I am one of the few people to say thanks to a war vet? That is just wrong, wrong, wrong. I am pretty much a total pacifist but I sure as hell do support the troops that are doing their job under horrid conditions, crapola pay, leadership that may or may not know what the heck they are doing, and without the stuff they need. It makes me so blooming angry that these people come home from war zones and don't get thanked, or even recognized.

This man and I had a wonderful conversation. He was in Viet Nam from '67 til '68, during the Tet offensive, in the Nha Trang/Cam Ranh Bay area. In the 40 years since he has been home, he told me that he can only remember three or four people thanking him for his service. Did you hear me? Three or four people.

He still cannot hear sudden, loud noises without jumping out of his skin.

He is involved with the local chapters of VFW, Vietnam Veterans of America, and Disabled Veterans of America.

And I think I found a kindred pacifist spirit. This man was drafted. He did not want to go to war to begin with, but went. He could have filed for CO status, but did not. He went, and he did his job as a regular old grunt. And now, he so opposes war. He believes it's impossible to actually fight in combat and come back supporting war. He believes that nothing is worth having to kill another human being, and nothing is worth holding your buddy's brains in your lap as he dies.

He told me that his 19-year-old son signed up for the Army. One day before leaving for boot, he saw his son looking kind of dejected and asked him, "Do you really want to join the Army?" Son's reply: "No, but I want to make you proud of me." My friend's reply: "You do not have to join the Army for me to be proud of you. As a matter of fact, I really wish you wouldn't join." So he didn't. I told him about my brother about the same age, who wants to be deployed, who wants to fight. He said, "You can tell your brother I said he has no idea what he's talking about."

The idiots who make the decisions to go to war are not the ones watching their friends get blown to smithereens. It is not usually their children either. It is people like my friend. I am so disgusted that people do not thank our troops for what they do. Not nearly enough. If I made the rules, our vets would make at least ten times what they make, and would not get dropped when they get too old, or too injured, or too insane.

Well, actually, if I made the rules, we would not be sending our youngest, best, strongest, and brightest off to war at all.

"Let him who thinks War is a glorious, golden thing, who loves to roll forth stirring words of exhortation, invoking Honour and Praise and Valour and Love of Country with as thoughtless and fervid a faith as inspired the priests of Baal to call on their own slumbering deity, let him but look at a little pile of sodden grey rags that cover half a skull and a shin-bone and what might have been its ribs, or at this skeleton lying on its side, resting half crouching as it fell, perfect but that it is headless, and with the tattered clothing still draped round it; and let him realise how grand and glorious a thing it is to have distilled all Youth and Joy and Life into a fetid heap of putrescence!....Who is there that has known and seen, who can say that Victory is worth the death of even one of these?" - Roland Leighton, a British officer, 1915

Please, please, please, thank every soldier or veteran you see. According to my friend, regardless of how you feel about war, that is the best way to support your troops.