It's Veterans Day today. Most Americans don't know the difference between Veterans Day and Memorial Day. Quite a shocker.

My father never made a big deal about being a Veteran. In fact, he never mentioned it at all unless I asked him about it directly. I asked him once if he would ever put one of those stickers proclaiming he was a vietnam vet on his car. "Me and thousands and thousands of other soldiers. Hell no. What makes me so special?"

This morning I looked at some of his pictures from Vietnam. Army helicoptors. A skinny white guy sleeping on the ground, his head resting on a wooden stair. A soldier with a small Vietnamese woman on his lap. And my favorite; my father's bare feet, white sand, a calm deep blue sea, and a lighter blue sky. I do not know why this is my favorite photograph. Perhaps because I like trying to imagine what my father was thinking about when he took it. What was going on around him. Thinking that when he got home, people would spit on him and call him a murderer? Proud that he was serving his country the way his father had done? So that those people at home would have the chance and the right to have their own opinion, to spit on him, to call him names. Vietnam was a huge botch but how do you accept that when you've been there, fought with your 'brothers', known how hard you'd tried to do right. Civilians wouldn't understand, period. 

Today, I don't give a shit about what people thought of the war. Wrong or right. Good or bad. Those lines are so blurry that it is highly unlikely that anyone is really right or wrong.

I know that I am proud that my father served. Kudos, Dad.