So nice to see all the Veterans Day references on so many blogs - especially from those young'uns who don't have any close family ties to veterans. I was remiss in not mentioning today earlier, so I'll try to make up for it now.

I'm the granddaughter of a bona fide WWI hero (DSC and Croix de Guerre) - a short, scrawny medic who went alone into flying bullets and mustard gas to single-handedly rescue several wounded American and French soldiers in combat. When he died years later (as a young man, of mustard-gas related health problems) the US didn't send anybody to his funeral, but the French sent a full honor guard - to the funeral of a longshoreman in Jersey City, NJ. My 77 year old father was a young boy at the time, but he still remembers the distinguished men in uniform and the lovely, elegantly dressed Frenchwomen who gave his dad a hero's funeral, as he deserved - when his own country didn't lift a damn finger. Never talk trash about the French around us.

I'm the daughter and niece of WWII veterans - the little boy who saw his father get a hero's funeral was a teenager on a Navy ship in Japan. He still talks about his Navy days, and my mother still remembers the lovely young Lieutenant who was her boss at the Navy Base where she worked during the war, right out of high school. My uncle, for whom my son was named, served in France.

I'm the widow of a decorated Vietnam veteran who is buried in the Florida National Cemetery.

So the Veteran's Day ties in this house run pretty damn deep. Lest you think this makes me in favor of the current "non-war" think again. I have nothing but respect and good wishes and prayers, and sadness, for the troops sent into this mess, they are doing their jobs and God bless them and keep them safe, but I will always remember my husband, dying of cancer, weakening daily by the time the invasion of Iraq started, watching this unfold saying, "I'm glad my friends are retired by now and aren't going to die for this bullshit." He had too much firsthand experience with friends dying for a half-assed cause, he was lucky to get home alive, and he was vehemently opposed to the invasion of Iraq, which somewhat surprised me, since I was the softhearted Pax Christi type in this house - but my husband saw what was going on and was appalled and disgusted. My dad, the WWII veteran, can do long, articulate, profane anti-war rants at 77 (but it's bad for his heart so don't get him started). So when people start that crap about how being anti-war means you "don't support the troops," or are being unpatriotic, I get mad enough to hit them, it's so unbelievably offensive to me.

Okay, so that was my offbeat and off-topic Veteran's Day Rant.