Veterans

Ditto!!! Many,many thanks. In a country divided, I think this is something we can all agree upon: We love and appreciate those who serve and sacrifice.

That's a great story, Halbert. It really brings home the fact that so many men and women have agreed to serve their country. We cannot thank them enough.

I'm one of those "old softies" who sometimes, if I see uniformed service members entering a restaurant, will sneak up to the hostess or waitress and quietly tell them "Add their bill onto mine. Their money is no good today."

Thanks to all of you who have made such positive comments about our veterans. I'm know that I and the other vets here appreciate that you do so very much.

But if I may, I would also like to add something else that I feel very strongly about concerning military service to our country, and which I believe so many of my brother vets here feel as well.

Namely, that it was our privilege to serve this great country, and to make the sacrifices for it that many of us did.

While our country will have issues that it must face from time to time, as long as military service to our nation remains honorable and respected, that is one of the very things that will continue to unite us as a people and to keep us strong as a nation!

Good Morning Veterans.We all served with honor and dignity. If we can take a moment to reflect on the real heroes who did not make it home,from all wars.My Son active Navy,Corpsman,1 Daughter Navy Veteran,1 son in law active Navy chopper pilot,1 son in law active Navy submarine officer,all with multiple tours.My Dad at 92 still alive WW2 Marine.Me Viet-Nam Marine,0311. I know all the sacrifices first hand that these young people make for our Country.And I know first hand the fears of parents knowing their child is in harms way.They are all proud of their service,as I am so proud of them all.

Thanks to all who served and to all who appreciate those who served. I'm a Navy Vietnam veteran, and, though not a crew member, have done swift boat patrols. I thank all veterans, including Lt. Kerry for his service. But enough about me and my Task Group 115 and 117 brethren.

I'd like to share a few paragraphs about a veteran and one of the very best men I ever knew. I met Ben when he was in his early 80s. He was a visiting professor at Boston College, where he had been a visiting professor for 26 years, in his own words "the best job I every had." His course on the theory of justice was consistently chosen as one of the most popular and respected by BC students. Ben had the same office as a full professor, but also had the added benefit of being allowed to return and teach every year after the mandatory retirement age of 70 because he was just a "visiting" professor. And what's more he had no graduate degrees -just a bachelor's degree from Harvard.

I met Ben one day when he called me after getting my name from the Cambridge, Massachusetts Historical Society, for whom I'd done a free-lance word-processing/editing job on the side, in addition to my day job. Ben needed help reading through 700 or more letters he had sent to his wife Ethel from Europe during WWII. These were V-Mail letters -- the Army would photograph letters written on a 1-page form, ship the film back to the States, and then print the photographic reproductions at 1/4 size and send the prints to the addressees. At age 80-something Ben was no longer able to read the 1/4 size photographs of his own handwriting, and by this time (late 1980s) Ethel had Alzheimer's. Ben wanted help reading through his letters so he could write a book based on them.

Here's a very, very, abridged version of Ben's story, though being brief is a challenge, having read most of his letters and the book he based on them. Ben grew up in Cuba, the son of a Jewish American businessman who had a wholesale grocery business in Havana. Ben went to Catholic schools in Cuba. When he entered Harvard at 17 he had to do a remedial English course because all of his written work in Cuba had been in Spanish.

By the time America entered WWII Ben was in his late 30s. He tried join the Army but was turned down as being over-age. A year or two later the Army came to him and said they noticed he was fluent in Spanish and French. Did he think he could learn Italian? Ben said no problem and was soon made a captain in the military police. The U.S. Army loaned him out the the British Army and he spent the North Africa Campaign tagging along behind the front and studying Italian and civil administration so he could become part of the occupation government that would be needed after the Allies invaded Italy. There are way more stories than I can summarize here -- defusing a prison strike; going up erupting Mt. Vesuvius to see that Italian civilians-and at least one dog-were getting down; going to an Italian church one Sunday because he heard they had a really great pipe organ and someone was going to be playing Bach.

At the end of the war, Ben was a major. The Army wanted to promote him to Lt. Col. and keep him. Ben said no thanks. After the war, Ben became one of the plank-holder employees of the United Nations when it was still in temporary quarters in Brooklyn. But then he was fired in the early 1950s when, as president of the U.N. Staff Association, he refused to let the Red Cross have separate lines of black and white blood donors at the UN. He was thereafter blacklisted as a "red" and became essentially unemployable other than by his brother in the family wholesale grocery business until he retired at age 59 -- when the Jesuits asked him to come and teach a course or two at B.C. And - poetic justice, or maybe just justice -- in his later years as a professor, the U.N. would invite him to sit on panel discussions at conferences, even though they had fired him in the 50s for standing by his anti-racist principles.

I loved this man. In the last years of his life I'd sometime go to movies with him at the Coolidge Corner Cinema in Brookline as he'd fiddle with his hearing aid and ask me "what did they say ...?" And we'd go to the real Italian (not Greek) pizza place where he could talk real Italian with the pizza guys including the words no one is taught in a college Italian class.

Ben was a true hero, even though I know - from having read his letters -- he would rarely remember to carry even a sidearm in his more than two years of wartime duty.

Jim

Thanks for posting this, I didn't know it was Veterans Day until I saw this post. Just got off a boat fishing the coast of Baja for 12 days, and didn't even know who won the election.
On Veterans Day in 1969 I was in th La VA hospital recovering from surgery the day before, hurting and not really wanting any visitors. An old guy sits by my bed and starts talking to me. I figure he's a WWI vet from the local VFW chapter.we talked for quite a while, and after he left I felt better and appreciated his visit. After he left an LA Times reporter came in and asked what General Omar Bradely talked about for so long. Worst and best Veterans Day I ever had,