Happy Veterans’ Day to the brave men and women who have humbled us with their sacrifice.
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An original song from the Bigs’ Jon David Khan:
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An editorial-of-sorts: A special shout out to all the veterans in my family, including a very special one in Heaven, my grandfather, a sailor, a gunner during WWII. He operated the big guns on the USS Alabama, the recoil of which shook his lean frame to bits and the sound shredded his eardrums. We learned that he was exposed to a massive dose of radiation at some point during the war and only when he was being prepped for surgery to remove part of his lung at the VA (don’t dare speak to me about nationalized health care if you’ve never helped care for a vet during their time in a VA) that he revealed he saw a portion of the fallout from one of the nuclear bombs. His own wife didn’t even know as Grandpa never spoke of it.
As a teenager, I once made the mistake of parroting to him some rhetoric I’d read in the media about our military complex and how the world would be safer if we stopped being bullies and my grandfather gave me the most excoriating and deserved lecture of my life. Sometimes we fight, he explained, because the alternative is subjugation to terror, not peace. We fight when threatened. We fight because freedom isn’t free. “I pay this debt with the hope that you don’t have to,” he said gravely.
The man was a father-figure to me and his service, and the service of others, is more than partly responsible for my conservative conversion.
May God bless them, their families, and keep our active duty military safe.
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