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President Woodrow Wilson declared November 11, 1919 as the first commemoration of Armistice Day. World War One ended the year before on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month. This was the end of the “the war to end all wars.” On May 13, 1938 Congress made the 11th of November in each year a legal holiday—a day to be dedicated to the cause of world peace and to be thereafter celebrated and known as “Armistice Day.” Armistice Day was primarily a day set aside to honor Veterans of World War I. In 1954 because America had just fought World War II and the Korean War Congress changed Armistice Day to Veterans Day. This made sense since there were 16 million men and women who served in World War II alone. On October 8th 1954 President Eisenhower made the first Veterans Day proclamation. In 1968 Congress decided to give everyone a long three day weekend by celebrating Veterans Day on Monday every year. The first Veterans Day celebrated under this law was in 1971 and it generated confusion. As a result the law was changed again in 1975. Veterans Day would be celebrated on November 11th regardless of what day it fell on. The new law took effect on November 11, 1978.

As a child growing up in the 1950's and early 1960's I remember when War World II veterans were young men mostly in their 20's and 30's. I was born just 5 years after the end of WW2 and I also remember WW1 veterans. Most of them were in their 50's and 60's then. When I was a teenager a friend gave me a WW1 gas mask that his father had picked up at an estate auction. I took it to the Tennessee State Museum in Nashville and the curator of the museum was a WW1 veteran. He identified it as a German gas mask. I asked him if he would like to have it for the museum. As far as I know that gas mask is still on display there. The 1950's and early 1960's was the period before the Vietnam War. America was a different country then than it is today. We were very patriotic, hopeful for the future and trusting of our government. The Korean War had been our first limited war before Vietnam and there seemed to be a difference between the morale of the WW2 veterans and the Korean War veterans. The Korean War veterans were a little more cynical. One of the biggest complaints that I heard from Korean War veterans was that they resented the fact that the war had never been properly identified by the press and by President Truman. Truman had called it a "police action" and they hated the term. They had fought a war more brutal than most of our wars and they wanted recognition for that.

Korea was a bloody nightmare. Summers and winters were very extreme. The war started as a meat grinder when young untrained American's troops had been pushed by the well trained and mechanized North Korean Army into the Pusan perimeter with their backs to the sea. Korea is a peninsula and Pusan is in the bottom southwest corner of Korea. General MacArthur pulled off a brilliant invasion at Inchon cutting off the North Korean army from the rear and trapping them between our troops at Pusan and our troops at Inchon near their capital city of Seoul. After destroying the North Korean Army MacArthur then invaded North Korea marching the US 8th Army and Marine Corps almost all the way to the Yalu river which is the boundary between China and North Korea. Ignoring intelligence that the Chinese were massing troops at the border MacArthur walked his troops into an ambush. Three hundred thousand Chinese troops poured over the border killing and capturing thousands of Americans. They drove our troops out of North Korea and back into South Korea. MacArthur was fired by President Truman and replaced by General Matthew Ridgeway. Ridgeway changed tactics and was in the process of driving the Chinese north. If left alone I believe that he could have won the war. The Chinese had overextended themselves and their army was very primitive. They communicated with bugles, drums and had no air cover. As usually happens the politicians got involved and halted our forward progress. They wanted to negotiate an end to the war.

The war changed overnight from a war of mobility into a hideous nightmare of trench warfare every bit as terrible as WW1. It was during this two year period of negotiations that we lost most of our casualties. An armistice was finally negotiated and the boundaries between North and South Korea were set pretty much where they had been before the war started at the 38th parallel. The war ended in a stalemate. Although we didn't win the war our Korean War veterans can be proud of the fact that they saved South Korea from tyranny. South Korea is a booming capitalist democracy today because of the sacrifice of our brave soldiers. We lost nearly 34,000 troops in three years of fighting. Two and a half million North and South Koreans died in the conflict. The American military has protected South Korea from another full scale invasion since the end of the war. When the war started I was only a few months old and when it ended I was 3. I had a cousin that was a Korean War Marine combat veteran and he seemed bitter about our involvement in Korea which foreshadowed the attitude many of our later Vietnam War veterans. He fought in the more bloody latter stages of the Korean War. This is what happens when politicians interfere with military strategy. Both Korea and Vietnam were winnable wars. Brave soldiers died because of political incompetence and a lack of will to win. I am a firm believer in never starting a war unless you are prepared to win at all costs. The lives of our military are too valuable to squander. When we are not committed to winning we cheapen their sacrifice.

I was fourteen years old when the Vietnam war started in August of 1964 with the Gulf of Tonkin incident. In 1957 President Eisenhower sent 200 troops to Vietnam as advisors but he knew that more American involvement would be a bad idea. Kennedy increased our advisors and support troops to 21,000 by the time he was assassinated but he also realized that the Vietnamese had to do the brunt of their own fighting. Lyndon Johnson made the mistake of expanding our role in Vietnam and gradually took over major combat operations in Vietnam. By the time I turned 18 in February 1968 there were over 500,000 American combat troops in Vietnam. When I was fourteen I never imagined that Vietnam would affect me. I figured it would be over by the time I became old enough to be drafted. As a senior in high school I began to think seriously about my options. I was very patriotic then and I still am today. I always knew that I would join the military some day and I would volunteer. I would not wait around to be drafted. Yet Vietnam was a different kind of war. It did not seem like we were trying to win it. Most Americans like myself hated Communism and wanted to stop it at all costs. But not like this. It seemed like every month or so we were enacting bombing halts trying to entice the North Vietnamese to negotiate an end to the war. We were also selectively choosing our targets. Some things were off limits. Even then I knew that this was no way to fight a war. I wanted to join a branch of the military and serve my country but I wasn't eager to join the Army or Marine Corps. They were taking most of the casualties and I wont lie to you that I was scared. War was not like playing Army in my backyard with the neighborhood kids. I had read enough books on war to realize the reality of it. In addition I wanted to get married upon graduation and I had heard that the Air Force was the best place for a married man. I was terrified at the thought of flying and still am but somehow I was able to overcome my fears of flying and during a 21year career I flew all over the world.

In January 1968 while still a senior in high school I joined the Air Force and was inducted on August 5, 1968. My wife Debbie and I married on June 21, 1968 and I took my basic training at Lackland AFB in San Antonio. At the end of basic I was assigned to the Air Force Security Police. Because of the critical need for cops in Vietnam I was sent DDA or Direct Duty Assignment to Kingsley Field in Klamath Falls Oregon. I learned to be a cop there through OJT or On The Job Training. From Kingsley I was assigned to Detachment 93 Erhac Turkey and was there for a year. After Turkey I finished my active duty at NORAD or North American Air Defense Command in Cheyenne Mountain Colorado. After a five year gap I joined the Tennessee Air National Guard in Nashville and served until early 1982. Later that year I joined a US Army Reserve MP unit in Melborne Florida. In 1983 I rejoined my Air Guard unit in Nashville. We made four overseas trips to Germany, Belgium England and Hawaii as well as many stateside deployments. We were also activated for the Gulf War in January and February 1991.

When people walk up to me and thank me for my service I am always a little embarrassed. In my view my service is modest compared to the combat veterans like my cousin who served in Korea, or those veterans who have sacrificed their lives, limbs, health and minds in the service of their country. Yet I also realize that veterans are a special class of Americans. Only one percent of the American people have ever served in the military. The minute that we raise our hands and swear allegiance to uphold the Constitution and serve our country we are giving the government a blank check. They can cash that check in any way they want to. If cashed it could mean the sacrifice of our lives and our health. Although I never received orders to go to Vietnam it could have easily happened. Most of the men in my unit in Oregon either went to Southeast Asia or were coming back from there. Cops were fighting and dying over there defending the air bases. After arriving in Oregon I decided that I wanted to volunteer for Vietnam but my wife didn't want me to go. For that reason I didn't volunteer but I always figured that I would go eventually but I received orders for Turkey instead. Although Turkey was not a combat zone I was shot at over there. We had plenty of enemies in Turkey. This experience taught me that it doesn't matter if you die on the sands of Iwo Jima or on a deserted road in Turkey you are still dead. You will have died serving your country. Military people die in training accidents, aircraft crashes, car crashes, and terrorist attacks. The result is the same. You died for your country. Yet when people thank me for my service I always want to tell them that it was an honor serving the greatest country in the world and if I had to do it over again I would do it in a heartbeat. I wouldn't take anything for that experience. Our government, however; has denigrated the service of our combat veterans who fought in places like Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq by not winning. This is one reason I like Trump. He kept us out of war during his first term and he will do it again. War can be avoided when you seek peace through strength. When I study my family's past I have discovered that my family has fought in almost every war that America has fought from the Colonial days until the present. The sweetest words I ever heard was when my plane touched down in New York City after I returning from Turkey. It was when a customs agent told me welcome home son. I literally wanted to get down and kiss the ground. Our veterans keep our ground worth kissing. On this veterans day I thank all of our veterans and say welcome home.