Gratitude for veterans

Dear Editor:I wonder if many people have a ho-hum attitude about Veterans Day and don't stop to realize its true meaning. Freedom is not free. Many vets, living and dead, paid an exorbitant price for it. What do you think would have happened to our country if our vets had refused to defend it after Dec. 7, 1941? Maybe the best case scenario would be that we would be under the dictatorship of some mad man like Hirohito or Hitler. Worst case: we wouldn't be here at all, possibly having been tortured and murdered like some of our GI's upon being captured by an enemy that refused to recgonize the Geneva Convention statutes. If you ask any combat vet if he sees himself as a hero, he will tell you he was only doing his duty to God and country. Well, if putting your life on the line and having the enemy use you for target practice doesn't qualify as being a hero, then we don't know the meaning of the word. We owe our vets a great debt of gratitude. Harold Hougland Downey Editor's note: the author is one of the few living survivors of the USS Franklin disaster of March 19, 1945, in which 800 shipmates perished.

********** Published: Oct. 31, 2013 - Volume 12 - Issue 29

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