A Veterans Day salute, with gratitude

(Click to enlarge.) Arlo and Janis by Jimmy Johnson.
This image obtained from Yahoo! Comics, but I regularly
read it -- in print -- in the Chicago Sun-Times.

We watched It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown this year at our house, as we do every year around Halloween. You'll surely recall the sequence where Snoopy imagines himself as the Great World War I Flying Ace, in aerial combat with the Red Baron. In 1966, when this special first aired, there were a lot of World War I vets around. They were the granddads explaining what that Snoopy bit was all about as they watched the show with their grandkids.

Today, though, as the Arlo and Janis cartoon points out, there's only one WWI vet left in America. And the World War II vets are rapidly fading from the scene. The veterans of Vietnam are gray now -- which I find astonishing since these guys are only a few years older than me. My draft card is still around in a drawer somewhere. I was never called.

I would have made a lousy soldier anyway: I've never been good with authority. I'm grateful, especially today, that there are others who could serve well. And who did.

And who do.