The teens then - oh, they seemed so old and mature to me - wore aluminum wrist bands with the name of their friends or family fighting a million miles away in unknown jungles. Perhaps they wore the name of a soldier they'd never met.
We moved a year or so later to a small town outside of Tulsa, Haskell. There, one of the young women in our church lost her fiance in Nam.
I'm sad to say I don't remember much about it, but since then, war has always impacted me. Not like some. I'm proud of our men and women who've given their lives for my safety and freedom.
"They stand on the wall..."
A semi-history buff, I stayed awake nights as a young teen reading no-holds-barred WW 2 books. I can remember slamming one of the thick, academic books closed as I read of the Nazi concentration camps, and the experimental labs, the testing they did on live humans.
I felt sick. I felt fear. And since then, I've loved our military and those who fought so men like Adolph Hitler don't succeed.
The world is still full of tyrants, of evil, and it's naive to believe "good dialog" will simply do the trick.
We need our men and women in uniform. I'm proud of America's strength because it is the thing that keeps us free.
That and the grace of God.
Many years ago while working near DC, I visited the Vietnam Memorial War. Standing before those list of names, I wept. But I am oh so grateful.
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