TheBanyanTree: Veterans Day

[Russ Doden]

It is Veterans Day today.  As a veteran of the Viet-Nam era, I always have
mixed feelings on this day.  Memories of how the vets were treated then -
which wasn't too great in many ways.  I have some memories that just won't
go away.  Surprisingly not of being overseas, but of the response to people
on the streets here "at home" in the USA.  The funny thing is, I was a
protestser in my own way, even though I was in the Navy.  A little sand in
the gears as it were I guess.
No matter what I think of the governments actions (and I'm usually not in
agreement with them it seems) I support our troops and feel they deserve
respect and recognition - and when they come home they deserve all the help
they can get to readjust to a life they no longer can ever truly return to.
Their way of seeing the world, and what it means to be in the military
changes them forever.  I've known a lot of people that though they came
back, they never truly came all the way back.  I hope that some day their
services will no longer be needed, but that cannot be as there will always
be people hungry for power and hungery for control - at any cost.

Russ
U.S. Navy 1966-1970