- Visit the Photo Place

Battle bearers

Remembering our veterans

Date published: 11/11/2009

"FOR EVERYTHING there is a season," wise Solomon wrote in Ecclesiastes. There's "a time for war and a time for peace." Honoring those who went to war and preparing them to return to peace is the duty of a just society. On this Veterans Day, then, we remember the 42 million who have served this nation in wartime, the 23 million living veterans (of wartime and peacetime), and, especially, the 651,030 who have given their lives in uniform.

Every war creates its unique hell: Witness the amputated limbs piled under trees during the Civil War; blisters and blindness from World War I's mustard gas; death marches in World War II; the ghastly cold of Korea; bitter agonies in POW camps in Vietnam; and mangled IED and suicide-bombing casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Yet all wars have this in common: As military members deployed, lives were interrupted, families stressed, the comforts of home driven into the wistful recesses of memory. For soldiers, sailors, Marines, and airmen--and their families--war means sacrifice. For the rest of us, it means security--and an obligation to "care for those who have borne the battle."

The Department of Veterans Affairs tells us that there is but one World War I veteran still alive: Frank Buckles of Charles Town, W.Va. He is 108. (When asked the secret to his long life, he responded, "When you start to die, don't.") We lose around 1,100 World War II veterans daily; just over 2 million remain. The remaining 15 million or so living war veterans served in Korea, in Vietnam, in Desert Shield or Desert Storm, or in the Global War on Terror (or in brief Cold War conflicts such as the liberation of Grenada).

On this Veterans Day, we have a lot of people to thank--and a responsibility to exercise the freedom bought with so much of our countrymen's blood.

POSTSCRIPT

Although we may grow numb to the newscasts, let's not forget the newest veterans, fresh from the battlegrounds of Iraq and Afghanistan. Many live with injuries specific to those theaters. Advances in critical care are allowing many of the most gravely injured to survive, but with multiple amputations or other trauma that complicate return to civilian life.

More than 53,000 service men and women who have served since 2001 officially suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. Neurologists are homing in on a new understanding of PTSD, as well as the type of brain injuries caused by IEDs and similar weapons. Flashbacks, nightmares, anxiety, irritability, and depression--the symptoms of PTSD--show up on brain scans as physiological changes in the gray matter. "My brain has been rattled," a recently retired Marine said.

But there's hope: The neural signals that overheat the "fear" centers and suppress regions that moderate that emotion can be adjusted, and PTSD potentially reversed. A medical facility in Bethesda focusing on PTSD and brain injuries opens next year.

Follow us on

Date published: 11/11/2009