Veteran's Day 2006


All politics aside, 3,125 Americans have died in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Many, many more have been wounded physically and psychologically.

I pray for those who serve, their families, and those have served throughout our tortured history. I wish to honor all of our fallen soldiers. They have given the supreme sacrifice for freedoms we hold dear.

Though I am a veteran, I never served during hostilities. For those who have in the past or do, I salute and honor you.

The following portion of John Donne's poem was an epigraph for Ernest Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls. I hope it is fitting and appropriate.

No man is an island, entire of itself;
every man is a piece of the continent,
a part of the main.

If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less,
as well as if a promontory were,
as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were:
any man's death diminishes me,
because I am involved in mankind,
and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
it tolls for thee.

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