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"I don’t trust anyone who was in the military."

I have watched a lot of our fellow Freepers answer this somewhat shallow and dishonorable comment by you but I waited until now to answer you. Some of your responders excused your Memorial Day comment as just an excess of alcohol but as they say, "in vino veritas". I suspect you mean every bit of what you said - I've seen those sentiments too many times over the years not to believe you.

Our military members are unique in the world in that they are some of the finest young members of our community and they join primarily out of feelings of patriotism and a sense of duty. I know that because I have spent nearly a half century with them, lived with them, fought with them, commanded them, supported them. They are the finest young people our nation can produce and those of you who decided to bypass military service, for whatever your reasons, will have to deal with that.

Military service is tough duty. Most of those young people are very newly out of high school and when some of them enter the kill-or-be-killed arena of combat, they are overseas and maybe out of their home town for the first time in their lives. There is a young excitement at the newness of their environment and the understood risks which is later tempered for them with entirely new feelings once they see and survive their first contact with the enemy. Then our young people see death around them, buddies and acquaintances who were talking to them or playing cards or bragging about something a few minutes before and now that young man is dead, looking more like a pile of bloody rags than a person. They will see the effects of bullets and fragmentation and blast first hand on their wounded and they will understand fully the dangers that face them and the losses yet to come.

These young men (and some young women) will continue, anyway. They will become harder in some private place and they will have the first of lifetimes of nightmares but they will keep going. The grind of day-to-day lethal danger will wear and age them and the luckiest will go home later without a scratch.

Some will be wounded. To be wounded is to have the shock of having part of your body suddenly and horribly torn away and then facing the very real possibility that your young life is over so soon. To be wounded is private and horribly and unimaginably painful and yet most of the wounded stay silent, primarily to avoid scaring their buddies nearby. To be wounded means the fast and frightening flight on a medical evacuation helicopter, triage and entry into surgery and then the long, hard way back to whatever you will end up being after the recovery.

For the parents and families of these military members, it is the constant and unremitting fear that they will lose their loved one at any time. If their loved one is wounded, it is the long and difficult path of supporting that loved one through treatments, and pain and indifference. We talk a good game of supporting our troops but when push comes to shove, unless we know one of them personally, our lives just go on, one way or another. If that family loses a family member, that sorrow is immeasurable as that little boy, that young prince in your life is gone, replaced by a flag draped box and then a lump in the ground. Once the obligatory ceremonies are over, almost as soon as the last note of taps is played, it's over and the suffering and sense of loss becomes yours alone, for the rest of your life.

It's one thing to claim to be a patriot and it's entirely another to take up the duty of fighting for your country. Many of you claim some huge portion of patriotism but when the real inconveniences and dangers of military service faced you, you had "better things to do". Patriotism is only real when you are willing to fight and die for your country and your sacred honor.

Our young people, in smaller proportions than ever before, continue to serve us with the risk of their lives. Try really hard to at least pretend to honor them on this day.