Veterans Day is a very special and heartfelt day in our beloved United States of America. On this very day on the American calendar, we remember all those very brave men and women serving in our armed forces and their devoted, supportive and equally patriotic families.
Unless one is a veteran of foreign wars, it is not possible to ever fully understand the mental suffering experienced by our soldiers on battlefields in foreign lands. The next bullet may be the end of life for our soldiers who, as a rule, are just starting their lives. In other cases, bullets are cruel and dreadful messengers of a future life filled with very painful and disabling injuries. Soldiers injured in the war experience more than a nightmare of extremely painful suffering. They often lack the help and relief provided by physicians, nurses, technicians, family, friends and ministers. Their only hope lies in medics and morphine. However, medics and morphine are not always available due to the fact that medics are sometimes victims of enemy attacks themselves.
Psychological suffering compounds the physical pain of an injured soldier who realizes there is little hope of returning alive to his beloved America, his family and friends. Wounded soldiers quite often find themselves accompanied by and understood by their wounded peers. Some share the same or worse pains and agony. Others are already silenced by death.
Our soldiers, to add to their heavy load of suffering, sometimes face the irresponsible, cruel, selfish and non-patriotic criticism of well-known American celebrities denouncing our soldiers as killers of civilians during the war. Those comments destroy the morale of our soldiers and add to their unbearable suffering. All wars carry the unfortunate price of civilian death and injuries.
Families’ lives are impacted by the sacrifice of our soldiers, as shown by a few quotes which summarize my long years of talking to soldiers, their wives and daughters: “On Veterans Day, it is most painful not to be able to take flowers to my husband’s graveyard.” “ No graveyard.” “ Missing in action.” “ No remains found.” Many people have shared with me that, on Veterans Day, they recall their many years of childhood not having a father to share holidays with, such as Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Christmas or birthdays, or to help them with their homework, or go with them to ball games, or to take them down the aisle to the altar on their wedding day, or to go hunting, or to go fishing …
Thanks to the sacrifices of our veterans and their families, today we enjoy a free America that has been entrusted by God almighty to be a lighthouse of hope, for human rights, for the whole world.
God bless America, “the land of the free and the home of the brave.”
In God We Trust, our beloved country, the United States of America.