Margeurite Hoff Beckley America's war veterans come in a wide varity of sizes, shapes and ages. Their collective experience spans two world wars and several foreign conflicts. They have followed war mules through the mud of Flanders Field, dropped from landing barges onto the beaches of Normandy, faced the icy cold of Porkchop Hill and trudged the rice paddies of Mekong Delta.
All veterans share a common bond.
A veteran is the first man up as the flag passes by on the 4th of July, and the last one down, for he has been a witness to the blood and tears which makes this and all other parades possible. A veteran is a man of peace, soft spoken, slow to anger, quick to realize that those who talk most about the glory of war are those who know least about its horror. He never jokes about war, hes been there, and still sees on memory's vivid screen the wounded and dying, the widows and orphans, he knows first hand that no war is good and that the only thing worse than war is slavery. He is a friend to all races of man, begrudging none, he carries with him the knowledge that it is not the man who is the enemy but enslavement and false ideologies. Those whom he once faced across the hostile battle lines, he now esteems his brothers.