Veterans Day

And I can't think of a better way to mark this solemn holiday than to present to you Patricia Haynes' Beatitudes for Veterans Day:

Blessed is the veteran of World War I, who spent his life exposing the horrors of war for those who fight in it and the willful deceit of those who declare it and seek stature from it. In his first anti-war novel, Erich Maria Remarque wrote "I see how peoples are set against each other...foolishly, innocently, obediently slaying each other ...While they [the promoters and boosters of war] continued to talk and write, we saw the wounded and dying...The wrong people do the fighting." All Quiet on the Western Front was banned in Nazi Germany.
Blessed are the children of veterans who break the code of silence on the war that never ends: Living with the "attendant nightmares" of their veteran fathers and being "the objects of their war-ridden rage and war-honed violence." War Is Not Over When It's Over chronicles, through interviews and photos, the spill over of brutal violence against girls and women in five war-ruined countries. The author Ann Jones' own life was "darkened by war." Her thrice-decorated WWI-veteran father turned his war-fed anger and violence on her and her mother.

There is a lot more to this guest column at Buzzflash, so be sure to read the whole thing, and give some thoughts this day to the veterans you know, and especially the veterans in your own family. They may have gone through hell and back and survived it, and won't tell you about it because they want to protect you.