Let's Thank Our Vets......all of them (buses, package, locations)

[Poncho_NM]

Vice President Joe Biden, center, addresses the audience during a Veterans Day ceremony at Arlington National
Cemetery's Tomb of the Unknowns November 11th, 2010, in Arlington, Virginia. DoD photo by Cherie Cullen.
101111-D-7203C-018

[Poncho_NM]

Pearl Harbor widows have gone into war work to carry on the fight with a personal vengeance, Corpus Christi,
Texas. Mrs. Virginia Young (right)whose husband was one of the first casualties of World War II, is a supervisor in the
Assembly and Repairs Department of the Naval Air Base. Her job is to find convenient and comfortable living quarters
for women workers from out of the state, like Ethel Mann, who operates an electric drill. August 1942.

Repository: Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, D.C. 20540 USA,
hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/pp.print.
Persistent URL: hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/fsac.1a34888.
Call Number: LC-USW36-78




Rich

[Poncho_NM]

A skydiver carrying a U.S. flag lands on the football field at Coronado Village Elementary School in Coronado,
California. November 10th, 2010, during Take A Vet to School Day. The event was held in observance of Veterans
Day. U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Blake R. Midnight.
101110-N-7303M-128

[Poncho_NM]

LAS VEGAS, NEVADA - Spectators waive American flags as members of the Las Vegas Veterans of Foreign Wars
motorcycle riders pass by during the Las Vegas Veterans Day parade November 11th, 2010. Airman from the U.S.
Air Force Honor Guard and Nellis Air Force Base participated in the parade. U.S. Air Force photo by Techical Sergeant
Michael R. Holzworth.

[Poncho_NM]

Shell casings fall from rifles used in a 21-gun salute during a Veterans Day ceremony at Veterans Memorial Fountain
in Belleville, Illinois on November 11th, 2010. U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sergeant Brian J. Valencia.
101111-F-7660V-164

[Poncho_NM]

Morning drill-SEATTLE, between 1910 and 1915.

Notes: Title from unverified data provided by the Bain News Service on the negatives or caption cards.

Forms part of: George Grantham Bain Collection (Library of Congress).

Persistent URL: hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/ggbain.09618.
Call Number: LC-B2- 2271-10

[Poncho_NM]

U.S. World War II veteran Tom Selleys, right, carries an American flag along U.S. Route 81 in North Dakota,
November 11th, 2010, during a 29-mile Veterans Day march in honor of U.S. war veterans. He was joined by former
U.S. Airman Terri Schwartz, left, and Hope Yongsmith, a doctor at the Fargo Veterans Affairs Medical Center. U.S. Air
Force photo by Senior Master Sergeant David H. Lipp.
101111-F-0681L-056

[Poncho_NM]

Comedy Central's Stephen Colbert takes a photo op with service members at Camp Victory's Al Faw Palace in
Baghdad, Iraq, June 5th 2009. Multi-National Corps Iraq Public Affairs, Photo by Sergeant Lindsey Bradford.
VIRIN:090611-A-6041B-001

[Poncho_NM]

Texas ADT-04 Checks on Developmental Projects - A village elder talks to members of the Texas Agribusiness
Development Team-04 near the construction site for the Arbaba Environmental Park in Ghazni, Afghanistan, October
12th, 2010. 1st Lieutenant Edgington and other members of the ADT were checking on the progress of the park,
which will provide a central location for conservation and agriculture training in Ghazni. ISAF photo by U.S. Air Force
Staff Sergeant Joseph Swafford.
101012-F-3682S-162

[gigimac]

Dear Veterans,
Since today is Veteran's Day and we are in the midst of two wars, I want to thank all our current war Vets who served in Afghanistan and Iraq and the general vicinity, for the service you have provided to our country. I want to say to these Veterans, if you came home and have various problems related to being a Vet, I understand this, as do many other Americans, and there is not only help out there, but I want to say a few things to help also. As for help out there, the Wounded Warriors Project is online, the Vets who participate in their nationwide outdoor type experiences have talked on television about how much it has helped them.

As for me, I want to preface my comments by saying I am married to a Vietnam Vet, and I also grew up with a military family, and I worked on newspapers and wrote stories about Veteran subjects, and when I was younger, I talked to many Vietnam Vets I barely knew, wanting to get information for a short story I am one day going to write. But this is not how I relate to you fine men and women who have just come out of a war zone. I relate because I just came out of the war zone of cancer. The treatments last for nine months, and I had chemotherapy, surgery, and radiation. All of these things were hurtful, shocking, and exhausting to me, chemo gave me feverish waking nightmares and pain and I still have peripheral neuropathy from it, surgery wounded and disfigured and scared me, radiation burned my skin off and tired me, and when this sort of thing is all over, it is written in all the cancer journals that this treatment can sometimes give us PTSD, post traumatic stress disorder.

Now, I am only two weeks out from my last treatment, but what I did to help myself get over all these terrors was I completely shut down in my home, no phone calls, no going to the grocery store, no paying bills, but I did have my husband and dog with me, with he picking up the slack whilst I wallowed on the couch and watched TV. This was my "decompression" period, putting time and space between myself and what just happened to me. I cannot and you cannot be expected to just jump right back into regular life without some sort of break.

So, on this Veteran's Day, I just wanted to tell you it's okay to take a break. I think you should take a break. Even if you came back a year ago, a break is still in order. Me, I like to be at home. Some people want to go ride horses, or go fishing, get a suntan, paint pictures, go to the Bahamas, WHATEVER it takes for you to get in a break, I say go for it. And when you rejoin the program, be kind to yourself, be slower, be whatever you feel like that day. If you get upset, step away and go on home, or go for a walk in a park, blow off steam in a gym or go running, just give yourself time to defuse. It's okay. Everyone who has half a brain knows our Vets today and lots of regular folks like me have really had it, and some Vets with multiple deployments, some in serious firefights, some just wierded out by how different things are over there, some filled with fear. In fact, it's all fear. Well, my nerves are shot, too.

I have run out of time, but I wanted to tell our military serving in today's wars that there is nothing wrong with taking a break, or looking into some group help like the Wounded Warriors Project, or just being all goofed up by the hardest job in the whole wide world, serving in the military for the United States of America. For we only want peace, and yet we have to go to war. For we only want to be with our families and friends, and yet we have to go to war. For we are only human beings with sensitivities and frailties, and yet we have to go to war.

So, thank you, bless you, and keep you safe, all of you are my neighbors, I love all of you, not just for what you do, but for who you are, and because to love all things, we also love all people. You are goodly folk who just went thru a hard time, and so just rest peacefully in the knowledege that someone you never knew is telling you right now that I DO give a damn about yourselves, I care, and not just on Veteran's Day, but every day of your life.
GG