Not everyone who put on a uniform
and served their country is a hero. In
fact, I believe only a very small percentage of those who served – and are
serving – are truly heroes, deserving of our admiration, and our sincere
thanks. The rest are, well, they’re
veterans, and as such, deserve our thanks and respect for
volunteering to serve their nation.
But calling everyone who puts on a uniform a hero cheapens
the word, and it just plain isn’t true.
Bill McClellan, a columnist for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch,
stirred up a hornet’s nest when he suggested a few days ago that one of the
areas in which government spending could be cut would be to stop holding funerals
with full military honors for every veteran whose family requests it. In Missouri, they had about 800 such funerals
last year, and each one cost about 400 bucks.
Hate mail, death threats, social media campaigns against
him; in short, the kind of stuff columnists usually thrive on.
Before you hate me even more, let me point out I’m the son
of a highly-decorated World War 2 Combat Infantry veteran, who was Commander of
his American Legion post for decades.
Dad saw plenty of action on the front lines in the European Theater of
Operations in the Big War, and of all his ribbons, awards, and citations, he
said “I didn’t do anything that an awful lot of other guys did, too”. And Dad was buried with full military honors,
laid to rest by a squadron of riflemen from his American Legion Post
(Hammond-Schmidt Post 55). And those
guys, veterans of WW2, Korea, and Viet Nam, gave dad his final sendoff and
wouldn’t take a penny.
As I gaze up from my desk, on the high shelf above me, are
two .30-06 shells: one from the 21-gun salute fired at my dad’s funeral, and
one from the salute fired at Toni’s dad’s funeral. They remind me not only of Bill and Mario and
my other family members who fired and were fired at by the enemy; they remind
me of all my friends who were drafted and went to war in Viet Nam.
One of my boyhood pals, Tommy Armitage, was drafted into the
Marines, back in the Viet Nam era when Uncle Sam lined up the draftees and went
“one-two-three-you’re a Marine, one-two-three-you’re a Marine”. A few months after Tommy was deployed to Viet
Nam, on February 12th of 1969 in Quang Tri Province, he threw
himself on a grenade and died saving the lives of four of his fellow Marines.
Tommy was a hero.
But, as McClellan pointed out, not everyone who served is a
hero. Plenty of guys spent their hitch
sorting mail, making meals, wrenching on equipment, and doing the myriad other
tasks that are necessary in the armed services.
And plenty of young men freely admit they did their time in the armed
services because a juvenile judge said “join the Army or go to jail”.
Is everyone who served in the armed forces a hero? No.
Does everyone who served in the armed forces deserve a
funeral with full military honors?
Maybe.
But for those who served in actual combat units, our nation
owes them a hell of a lot more than a military send-off with a 21-gun salute
and a folded flag handed to the family.
