CDR Salamander - The Eleventh Hour of the Eleventh Day of the Eleventh Month

Yes, I know. In America this is Veterans Day. I’ve written before about my conflicted thoughts on some aspects of how we observe it, and I won’t dwell on it again.

Yes, we have the very American Memorial Day that, too, modernity has warped a bit.

The older I get, the more a long-standing feeling gets stronger with me. It has always been there, but in my years seconded to NATO and serving with the British, I really started to feel that, yes, they have the right idea.

An unnecessary, avoidable, and devastating war that America only had a sniff of. In a spasm that really was the West at war with itself for reasons soon overcome by events and forgotten, it destroyed the old world, and begat the horrors that were the rest of the 20th century.

So, tip of my hat to my fellow veterans…enjoy your discount shopping. For me and mine, both of my grandfathers were enlisted Sailors in the war—maternal stateside and paternal on the USS Arkansas (BB-33) with Battleship Division 9 attached to the Royal Navy’s Grand Fleet—we prefer the more reflective, sober, and somber Remembrance Day.

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