As a US Army veteran, I went to basic training over forty years ago, this day means something to me. Sure, it’s a time to honor veterans in general and the nation at large. But when you’re in uniform thoughts of the flag and the Constitution don’t enter into it much. Your focus is on your job and on your fellow soldiers, airmen, sailors, or Marines.

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Not that you don’t love your country and aren’t proud to be an American. But in the Army you gain respect by the proficiency with which you can do your duty and whether you’re a person somebody can rely on in a pinch. So naturally, on Veterans Day those guys are the ones you miss.

I have several friends from the Army, some may be reading this now, whom I’ve kept in touch with over the decades. We live all over the world, one guy is in Australia, but stay connected through Facebook and phone. Have even been to an Army reunion or two. They generally feature guys in their 50s and 60s trying to act like they’re in their 20s again and their disapproving wives and girlfriends clucking from tables or standing around like censorious nannies. Ah, to be 55 again.

Thus again it’s the men, not the flag, as Sir John Keegan noted in “The Face of Battle”, that you recall. One guy said everything twice, he became “Xerox.” Another one and I defiled a Lutheran Christmas Eve mass in a major German city by loudly and drunkenly commenting that the items on the cover of the modern art mass program looked like household electronics. One was dubbed the “Holy Hair Dryer of Antioch.”

Another friend, who was the best soldier I ever met and was an NCO when I was a private, was so comically incensed by my various exploits that he nicknamed me “F***ing Kamioner” because whenever I was referenced he looked at the ground, shook his head, and intoned the amusingly obscene moniker. This is what you remember on Veterans Day and what you honor in your heart and mind. Though, winning the Cold War was kinda cool in of itself.

 

This piece was written by David Kamioner on November 11, 2021. It originally appeared in DrewBerquist.com and is used by permission.

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