Veterans deserve our gratitude
November 11, 2009 (Wednesday)
Today is Veterans Day. When I was a 
boy, it was Armistice Day, and we were dismissed from school. We went downtown to see the parade, a celebration of victory in World War I. After World War II and the Korean War, the celebration became a special recognition of the millions of men and women who have served their country in the armed forces: Veterans Day.
In 1967, I went to Okinawa and several of the Ryukyu Islands to observe and assist the missionaries and military personnel who voluntarily on their own time joined the missionaries in taking the gospel to villages on the islands. It was the experience of a lifetime for me. While in Okinawa itself, I led a retreat for young people of the Naha Baptist Church. Many of them were in the military and were about to be deployed to Vietnam. In many ways it was a typical youth retreat, with the games, joking, courting, etc. that always accompanies those camps. There was, however, the ever present awareness that soon some of these young people would be in combat.
One day we were riding in a car that passed by a runway just on the other side of a fence separating the airfield from the road. A large number of soldiers were boarding the transport plane. After a short trip in the air, they would enter a battle zone. Some of them would never return. Others would make it through alive, but wounded, disabled or traumatized by their experiences. These are the veterans, the people we honor this day. If any of our holidays deserves to be observed with special emphasis on what it means, this one surely does. All our veterans deserve our thanks, our appreciation, and acts of gratitude.
Upon my return to the United States, I walked from the plane with a young man returning from Vietnam. I thanked him for the privilege of carrying his bag into the airport terminal.