Veterans Deserve Our Respect — Reflections on Veterans’ Day

This weekend my hubby and I went to the Palo Alto VA hospital with our church to serve the veterans a barbecue lunch. We always organize a barbecue on Memorial Day and Veterans’ Day for the veterans there. My hubby always mans the grill and I help dispense food on the chow line. Each time we have the event we serve hundreds of people in the hospital. It’s always a fun and humbling event and I am glad that I get to participate. It’s also nice to see that the Palo Alto VA hospital is a great facility for the veterans.

Regardless of my opinions on the war and military spending I have a tremendous amount of respect for the veterans of America. A lot of the extremely injured soldiers I saw at the hospital are probably younger than me. One particular soldier that left an impression on me was a very young man who had a bruised face and staples in his skull. I saw him a few months ago during memorial day, and today on the radio I heard an interview with a soldier at the same VA hospital. He said that he lost half of his skull and his brain is severely injured. I wonder if that’s the same man? Another veteran that I remember very clearly is a tiny old woman who was shorter than me and slightly hunched over. She was still quite energetic and she said that she used to be a marine who handled artillery. It is humbling to meet these veterans because on the surface they are such ordinary people, but they were presented with extraordinary circumstances, and I think that makes them extraordinary, too.

I believe all of these veterans young and old deserve our respect. I don’t pity the young Iraq War veterans’ wounds because I don’t think they want anyone’s sympathy. What the wars have done to the veterans is irreversible and now what would help them is support in going back to some kind of normal life. I think it’s ridiculous that some VA hospitals are horribly mismanaged and a lot of young soldiers with families are paid very little for their work. I think a lot of veterans do want some recognition that they are still there after the wars and the military and they don’t want to be used and then discarded. I find it unsettling that a large proportion of the homeless are veterans, and I wonder if there are programs that can help veterans reintegrate into civilian life.

Finally, I feel like that volunteering a couple weekends out of a year is so insignificant, and I really want to do more volunteering.

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