In Flanders Fields.

I was in that rather lucky generation - too young, really, to remember Vietnam, born long after the World Wars and Korea. A college student during the first Gulf War, which mostly took place while I was on a train riding home for spring break (!). This is the first period of actual war - although I guess it is not formally-declared by-act-of-Congress war - I have known in my life.

When I was a little girl, on November 11, I remember there used to be old men outside the grocery store who sold little poppies made of crepe paper. My mother bought them, I never quite understood why until I hit middle school and we read Joel McRae's poem. (I remember digging out one of those crumpled poppies from a desk drawer and actually looking at it then - and seeing the little paper tag from, I think it was, the VFW). I also remember we found some old crepe-paper poppies in with my grandma's things when we cleaned out her kitchen after her death.

She had a brother who went to WWI. She had a son who went to WWII. Her brother came back, my mom has an extensive book of newspaper clippings about the campaigns he was on that my great-grandmother (Uncle Burt's mother) kept while he was "over there." My Uncle Stanley - her son - came back from WWII (again, my family is one of the lucky ones).

On the other side of my family, my dad's father was one of the early pilots in WWI. Somewhere, my father has what I think is an extremely cool and dashing photo of his dad - standing next to his plane in the typical "aviator garb" of the day. My dad's dad came back from WWI.

In more recent years, cousins and nephews of my mother went to Korea and to Vietnam. They came back, some the worse for wear (one of my cousins is still on disability from it). All of my military relatives (that I know of) over the past 100 years were among those who came back.

That is not true of many families with military relatives. It is still sadly not true today. Every morning I wake and steel myself to hear of another death "over there".

Regardless of how you feel about military action, you have to recognize and acknowledge the sacrifice that those people make - and their families, their friends, their communities - to stand up for a country they believe in.

would that we would never have to go to war again. would that no more families would have to keep a folded flag in a case as a memory of their loved one. But the world being what it is, I don't see that ever happening.

I am thankful for all of those who fought, who continue to fight, and who will fight in the future if it becomes necessary. Because of them, I am free to gripe about the long lines at the Wal-Mart, or to disagree theologically with my pew-mate at church, or to stand up in the front of my class and make jokes about athlete's foot, instead of worrying about matters of my own survival and freedom.