Thank you, Applebees, for a delicious dinner. The place was
packed with veterans. This year, the brewers of Sam Adams provided a free beer with my
complimentary meal. Thanks, Sam.
We wanted to replenish our dog and bird feed supplies and
pick up several hardware items. Our local Tractor Supply store was the place to
go, and they gave a 15 percent discount to vets. Thanks, Tractor guys.
A surprise gift showed up the day after Veterans Day. We went
shopping for several exotic holiday gift items at World Market. At the checkout
stand was a sign offering vets a 25 percent discount throughout the weekend.
Thanks, World Market.
My local newspaper marked the day with a feature story about
Veterans of Foreign Wars posts in the area recruiting honor guard members. The
honor guards traditionally present a flag to the family of diseased vets and
fire 21-gun rifle salutes at burial sites. Seems several posts can't come up
with enough members who can shoulder a rifle to handle the duties, so they now
seek members of the American Legion and even honorably discharged vets who are
not members of the VFW or Legion to serve in honor guards.
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| They want us to help honor Legion vets who don't honor us. |
I served two years in the U.S. Army, and was honorably
discharged on May 19, 1960. I don't qualify for VFW membership because all my
service was stateside and VFW members served overseas. I have no problem
whatever with that. However, I think it
is reprehensible that many honorably discharged veterans are ineligible for
American Legion membership.
Overseas service is not required by the American Legion. Members
need only honorable service during seven "war eras," defined by
arbitrary dates. Because my service dates don't fit into an "era," I
am a second-class veteran not eligible for Legion membership, even though some
of my less fortunate fellow soldiers were being dispatched to Viet Nam as
"advisors" during my service time. Strangely, if I had served for
just one day in the "era" that began nine months after my discharge,
I would be welcomed as a Legionnaire.
Thousands, perhaps millions, who served honorably in the Army, Navy, Marines, and Air Force are with me in the ranks of second-class
veterans.
It seems the ultimate irony that we now are being invited to
join honor guards to shoulder a rifle and fire a salute to fellow veterans
whose largest organization bars us from membership. Perhaps those
"patriots" in the U.S. Congress, some of whom never gave a day of military service to their country, could act to give
second-class veterans first-class status. The American Legion operates under a
Congressional charter.
