Tonight I sit in my unit’s annual Hail and Farewell. We are loosing 22 fine instructors from my military school. I am one of the new instructors and am really enjoying what I do now. Teaching young officers to be all they can be.
As I watch these “old timers” receive their awards and make their final speeches, I notice their wives and children in attendance. How they beam with pride about their loved ones and the service they have rendered. They too are thanked and given roses in appreciation of their contributions as well. It is then that I realize our children and grandchildren will not know the difference between an Army Service Ribbon and a Medal of Honor. All they know is Mom or Dad served proudly when our Country needed them and they appreciate it all.
All the hard work, all the long days and nights, all the extra schools, the deployments, the friends and lives touched; in the end, it’s all a shadow box, it’s a story or two at the American Legion, it’s the memories of soldiers lost, friends saved, freedom preserved and a life lived in service to others.
I have a few more years in service if God will allow. I am not sure how my life would be different without the military. I don’t know what i would have become or how things would have changed. My life may have been a little easier, I may have got to spend a little more time at home, but one thing I know: I would of been less of a person, less of a man and less appreciative of life in general without this experience.
I don’t regret a pushup, a tank table, a NTC rotation, a late night in Hattiesburg or a formation in the sun. The United States Military influenced me as much as anything else in my life.
God Bless these old soldiers and watch over and guide the new ones, and God Bless the united States of America.
