Today is Veterans Day.

Armistice Day, actually.  It was instituted by an Act of Congress in 1918 to commemorate the ending of WW I, also called the "War to End All Wars". 

Armistice Day is supposed to have a moment of silence, where church bells toll on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month every year in perpetuity.  When citizens hear the church bells, they are to spend a moment thinking about those who risked and gave their lives for the sake of their countries.

One year, at eleven o’clock on Veteran’s Day, I was stuck in traffic.  I heard no bells -- just car horns.  The only “salutes” I saw were of the middle finger variety between drivers.

Much has changed in our country since I served in its military during the Viet Nam era.  We have had so many more wars.  The Dominican Republic.  Grenada.  Panama.  The first Gulf War.  Somalia.  Afghanistan.  And now Iraq.  Is Iran next?  Then North Korea?  China?

There never seems to be an end to our getting into wars despite what was said about WW I.

I remember the day I arrived home from VietNam.  11/11/69.

In the space of 42 hours of leaving the war zone, I had traveled 12,000 miles, processed out of the Army, and was standing in my uniform of short-sleeved shirt and no jacket in mid-town Manhattan.  I hadn’t seen temperatures lower than ninety or buildings higher than two floors for well over a year. 

I soon found that I was lost in a canyon of cold indifference. 

It was 7:00 a.m. in the Big Apple.  Its citizens were trodding off to yet another day of work, getting sucked into the vacuum nozzles of skyscrapers that were as gray as the day.  I ducked into Woolworth’s for a hot cup of coffee and a place to get out of the blustery wind chill. 

I thought they might take notice.  A guy in a summer khaki uniform.  Lips and arms blue with cold, shaking in his shirtsleeves.  People never looked up from their Daily News; perhaps afraid to catch the eye of a guy with the 1,000 meter sniper-scope stare.  I guessed that they didn't want to think about the war that was on the other side of the planet.  Anyway, Christmas is coming. 

I thought, “Welcome home, Mike Pulaski.  This is your first Veterans Day back in the ‘Real World’".

When I lived in Washington DC, I went down to the Vietnam Memorial Wall frequently; always on Veterans Day and Memorial Day.  I felt the need to do that for all the guys I knew through my two tours in 'Nam whose names are now etched in black granite. 

Sometimes I'd awaken at night, remembering the name of a fellow I knew in OCS or "in-country", and was compelled to go to the Wall that day to see if his name was there.  Weird.  Most of the time I found the name on the Wall that I had thought about during the night.

One time, I saw some men in slouch hats gathered around one of the Wall’s panels and quietly approached their group.  A woman was in their midst, her eyes lowered, softly talking about her husband, who was remembered so sweetly and who was stolen so swiftly from her youth. 

When she finished, she slipped off her wedding ring and left it on the ground in front of one of the granite  panels, in remembrance of her husband and the 38 other brave young men from New Zealand who had died in VietNam.  Then she slid away to begin her long, painful, solo trip back to Wellington.

“Fare well” I said silently, watching her go, wishing I had the courage to give her a hug.