WASHINGTON, Nov. 7, 2013 – In declaring Nov. 11 as Veterans Day, President Barack Obama said the nation’s obligations to those who have served endure long after the battle ends.
Here is the text of the presidential proclamation:
On Veterans Day, America pauses to honor every service member who has ever worn one of our Nation's uniforms. Each time our country has come under attack, they have risen in her defense. Each time our freedoms have come under assault, they have responded with resolve. Through the generations, their courage and sacrifice have allowed our Republic to flourish. And today, a Nation acknowledges its profound debt of gratitude to the patriots who have kept it whole.
As we pay tribute to our veterans, we are mindful that no ceremony or parade can fully repay that debt. read more>>>
WASHINGTON, Nov. 9, 2013 – President Barack Obama paid tribute to America’s veterans today during his weekly address, promising to ensure the United States demonstrates its appreciation through career and educational opportunities.
“Veterans’ Day weekend is a chance for all of us to say two simple words: ‘Thank you,’” he said, recognizing all veterans who have preserved America’s freedoms through many decades and in many different theaters.
Noting veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, and those now returning home from deployments, Obama said the United States must “serve them as well as they served us.”
That includes “making sure that every veteran has every chance to share in the opportunity he or she has helped defend,” he said. “In addition to the care and benefits they’ve earned – including good mental health care to stay strong – that means a good job, a good education, and a home to call their own.” read more>>>
November 1, 2013 - An estimated 2.3 million men and women have served during the nation’s last 12 years of war in Afghanistan and Iraq. And as they transition out of the military, the veterans will need care for immediate and long-term conditions like post-traumatic stress and traumatic brain injury.
And many from health care professionals to retired military are concerned that the neglect of past veterans is not repeated with this new generation.
Troops in World War II came home in 1945 and went right back to work and college. There was no re-integration, no recognition of post-traumatic stress. So many WWII vets had to find their own ways to cope with the trauma of war.
“I never saw my father go to bed – in my entire life – sober. I never saw him go to work drunk,” said retired Lt. Gen. Martin Steele. “I always saw this tortured man with the self-discipline and commitment and resolve to live life one day at a time.”
Alcohol was how Steele’s stepfather, a WWII veteran, dealt with his trauma of having his fighter plane shot down, spending a year in a Prisoner of War camp and being tortured by the Germans. read more>>>
Thankfully I was born from and grew up to help what we often call the 'Greatest Generation' after World War II grow a society that was envied in many ways, at least into my first some three decades on this planet and in this society. The second half of my life not so, and as to the peoples responsibility, the Veterans' Administration agency, that had already stop being from that 'Greatest Generation' as to the results of our wars from Korea, as those served found it easier to ignore the many issues, forward and especially in the present decade plus now, though there is much more symbolic 'patriotic' flag waving for those served to say 'they support'.
A bureaucracy built to serve World War II soldiers must be rehabbed to deal with a new breed of veterans. read more>>>
Which finally we have an entire Executive branch helping with the leadership in the VA attempting to rebuild that VA, while budget for is mostly borrowed and not the countries Sacrifice of what is owed. While the congressional obstruction, especially by those seeking to privatize for corporate profit and wall street returns, like their wars, continues unabated and with the support of many who are served and even some in those ranks who've served. Only time we ever came close to same was with Cleland, but obstructed by the usual politics that also were used to slander him and take him from copntinuing serving the way he choose he would like to, as Secretary of the VA in the Clinton Administration, the rest have been political appointee's, mostly, doing those executive branches wishes and that was extremely clear in the earlier years of these two recent wars!
Nearly 40 years after the war, American vets who live in Vietnam are working to foster reconciliation between the two countries, while other former US soldiers are traveling there to find 'closure.'
Veterans Greg Anderson (l.) and Bill Ervin on a hill in Vietnam, where they were overrun in 1969. Courtesy of Bill Ervin
November 10, 2013 - A photo of Greg Kleven, dated April 1967, shows him posing in front of a tin-roofed hooch, wearing an undershirt so stained it matches the sand beneath his feet. In his right hand, he is holding an M-16 rifle. His shaved head is cocked to the left and he's sticking out his tongue in a half smile.
The 18-year-old enlistee is three months into his tour of Vietnam in a Marine Corps Force Reconnaissance company, a special operations unit similar to the Navy SEALs. He looks brash and ready to take on any Viet Cong who cross his path.
"We had all of the difficult missions," Mr. Kleven recalls. "We blew up bridges and parachuted out of planes. Each patrol was like an individual war."
As we talk in his apartment overlooking the Nhieu Loc Canal in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, it's hard to find any trace of that brazen marine in Kleven today. Two decades after leaving Vietnam on a stretcher with a bullet wound to his back, Kleven returned to the country for good in 1991, making him, he says, the first American to live in Ho Chi Minh City after the war. read more>>>
Former U.S. Army infantryman Alex Munoz, who served in Iraq in 2007 and 2008, visits a religious shrine earlier this year in Lalish, a mountain valley in northern Iraq.
10 November 2013 - Traces of old battlefields seem forever wedged inside the minds of many combat veterans: friends killed, wounds sustained, deaths inflicted.
But scores of ex-service members are willingly returning to old combat sites, some seeking their own tranquility – some just hoping to savor peace after the dust has long settled.
From Germany to Vietnam to Iraq and other lands of past U.S. wars, American veterans like 96-year-old James “Maggie” Megellas have stepped back in time by heading back in person, rekindling harsh memories but re-connecting with – now – welcoming locals.
“I crossed the Waal River again where I recall one of my boats being sunk by an enemy shell. I lost half my men,” said Megellas, a retired officer in the 82nd Airborne Division, referencing his company’s famous, 1944 daylight traverse of the Dutch waterway while under German fire. He was invited by officials in the Netherlands to visit after publishing his 2003 book "All the Way to Berlin." read more>>>
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