To my fellow Brothers in Arms – both past and present, I salute you on this day.
This Veterans Day – I want to pay special tribute e to those who fought in the Pacific theater  WWII – in places like Guadalcanal, Marshall Is, Phillipine Sea, Leyte Gulf, Okinawa.  Your memory lives on.
As I write these words, our nation is at war. War is tough and nasty.  It rips at your very being and spits you out like mere nothing.  As I reflect on years past, I suppose I could have spent my youth in some other vocation; I could have probably been an accountant or even a policeman, but the confluence of time and fate has made me a military man.  In this vocation, I have found both meaning and value of things well beyond the material; and I have come to a cogent understanding of  and appreciate for, the utter complexities of living in a society such as our, froth with all the contradictions and tensions of race, sex, politics, etc…
So today is Veterans Day, a day with special meaning to those of us who wear the uniform…today is a proud one in the land of the brave”.
today And I am very proud to call so many other like me brother. Â Today is our day.