I was invited to join a couple of other old vets for lunch today, TGI Friday restaurant honoring vets, so I wore my army cap to work this morning. These past weeks I've been hearing radio people saying "Thank you for your service!" every five minutes, urging listeners to repeat it to vets, and I'm uncomfortable hearing it. But I wore that hat anyway, I guess just to acknowledge the experience my lunch friends and I have in common.
Mid-morning, I had to go to Menards (like Home Depot, only better) for some plumbing parts, drove over there, parked the van. Walking in, I took the hat off, stuffed it in my coat pocket. Didn't want to hear people saying it to me.
Let me say to you, thank you for your taxes. I used up a ton of 'em. You gave me more than I gave you. Settled me down, gave me top-notch tech training, world travel, exposure to other cultures, and after a long time away from it, a better appreciation of the hold my own country has on my heart.
After I came back , it was college tuition and then an inexpensive mortgage on a new house. I didn't have to shoot anyone or be shot at, although that was just luck. Others in my specialty weren't so lucky. My job was to maintain & repair a mobile system of microwave-beamed communications, keep it ready to go, so Belgium (NATO HQ then) could talk to W.Germany and France and Nederland, in case the cold war got hot, which it didn't. I didn't have to risk my life...instead you could say I was in the business of fostering communications between people of different cultural backgrounds. Very un-warlike, as I like to think of it.
Anyway, thanks for all that, for all this . And thanks also, soldiers who are not having it so good as I did. Thanks for your service.
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