Remembering Our Veterans...
Nov 11 '03
The Bottom Line Lest we forget.
We, as Americans, take our freedom for granted. Today, November 11, as in every year, is the day we remember those who fight to help us keep our freedom. I would like to dedicate this review to all of the men and women who are Veterans, or who fought or are currently in any battle or skirmish, living or deceased, and who have dedicated at least a portion of their lives to preserving our freedom. Thank you to them all and God Bless them.
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My uncle, Thomas Kelley, was killed on December 2, 1944, six months before the end of World War II. He was in the United States Air Force on a B-26 bomber in Belgium. As was told to me, his crew was flying on a foggy night on their mission to stop Hitler. They somehow lost track of where they were and flew into a mountainside. There were eight crew on board and everyone was killed. Tom had just had his birthday and turned 23 years old two weeks prior to his death.
His family received a telegram a few weeks later, on December 20, with the news of his death. My Dad, Tom's younger brother, was 13 years old at the time. (I can only imagine what a sad Christmas that was for the rest of the family in 1944.) The only things I have of this uncle who I never knew are some letters he had written to his mother (my grandmother). The letters, written so long ago, give Tom a personality and a voice. To me, the person writing those letters seemed like such a brave young man, overseas for the very first time in his young life. He was from a small town in Ohio. I'm sure that in many ways, the war was a great adventure for him. But he was a soldier and so many soldiers were young men, barely adults, from small American towns.
I am writing this because he was a person I never knew, but I have heard stories about him from my Dad, and what a fun big brother he was. I've seen his picture with a big smile from his old high school yearbook and learned he liked football games and was the popular head of his senior class. I have learned too, a little bit about what he was like from reading his sweet neatly-handwritten letters home to his Mom, my grandmother.
Tom was a real person, a person who was on this earth for just 23 short years, who has now been gone for almost 60 years.* If he were alive today, he would be over 80 years old. Would he ever have married? Would he ever have had children of his own? Those questions will never be answered because, like so many others before and since, he never had the chance. He was fighting for this great country and for our freedom.
*Tom was buried in an American military cemetery in Belgium. His mother was never able to visit his grave.
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Our Veterans are everywhere you are everyday. There are Veterans represented from every war, skirmish and from peacetime as well. They deserve our respect. I recently heard that our now elderly World War II Veterans are dying at the rate of 100 per day! At that rate, the entire generation of these brave men will soon be gone.
Thank you to LisaDo for hosting this important write-off honoring our Veteran’s today. Please make sure to read the excellent reviews by other participants: mimi369, beckish, Debbie26, and yours truly, gaelkm.
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