Talk of The Villages Florida - Beautiful Reminder

Beautifully done! Veterans of that era are rapidly disappearing. Our next-door neighbor here up north is a Korean War vet; he's 83 and not in the greatest of health. A friend was a veteran of the Spanish Civil War fighting the Fascists before World War II; one day I asked him how many vets of that war were still alive, and with sad humor he answered, "About two hundred," then looked at his watch and said, "Well, a hundred ninety-nine...." He himself died earlier this year.

I am a veteran myself though I didn't serve in a theater of war. (Why is it called a theater?) After my eyesight was restored in 1992, another friend, himself a wounded Vietnam veteran, took me to Washington D.C. to see THE WALL. In itself it is a gripping place, but being there with someone who immediately connected with total strangers who were fellow veterans who shared something beyond tangible and could show me what would have been the place on the wall for his name except that someone, whose name he pointed out to me, was standing between him and the fellow soldier who had set off the mine and who lost both legs. Sobering.

My parents experienced war firsthand as children caught in it in different parts of Europe during World War I, and I was raised with the horror stories of it all. I know I'm generalizing, but by and large Americans, except for the vets in this video and later wars, have no clue what war is really about. Just as I wonder why it's called a theater, I wonder too why, as in this video but even in the history books, WWI is called The Great War and WWII The Greatest War. Necessary is one thing; great has a whole other meaning, at least to me....