Why do American veterans need to be honored? They have defended us and allowed us our freedom. They have lost limbs, comrades, and even some of their minds. They allow us to say “It’s going to be all right…” They know what gunfire sounds like. They have felt the pain of seeing someone die before their eyes. Some of those people they knew and bonded with as they fought. They know what war sounds like.
BOOM… BOOM…BOOM… The bells of war cry out. They ring every morning. They wake the soldiers that actually can bear to sleep. A soldier dies every second. Dead… Dead… Dead… There goes him… and him. With every person I know that dies, a piece of my heart goes with them. By the end of the war I have less than a broken heart. I have the pieces of my heart that belong to my family, but that’s almost all that I have left. But the idea that I’ll be able to see them again… that drives me on. That makes me want to come home safe.
“In war there are no unwounded soldiers.”~ José Narkozy.
José was correct in his statement. I couldn’t have said it better myself, actually. There is no such thing as an unwounded soldier, whether physically or mentally. People have gone insane after going to war. They have lost some of their best friends or maybe had to come home without one arm or leg. Maybe a piece of shrapnel was embedded in them and they had to pay for surgery. Maybe they were burned from an especially close explosion. We are lucky not to have experienced any of this.
We didn’t and don’t have to go through what they went through. Do we have to worry about losing our lives any moment? Do we have to worry about hearing that click that means that we just stepped on a mine? Do we have to curl up in a cot and be scared to sleep? I don’t, because these are experiences that only a war veteran can have lived through and actually relate to. I could never be in a war, because I wouldn’t be able to handle the kinds of things our veterans have gone through. It takes someone really special to be able handle it. Those who can, and have, are all heroes.