…and a big thank you to all the service men and women who served our country as we honor you on this Veterans Day. A day that was originally called Armistice Day to celebrate the official end to World War 1 that ended 100 years ago today with the signing of the Armistice. On June 1, 1954 Congress changed the holiday from Armistice Day to Veterans Day so all American veterans would be honored. I never served in the Military but my dad did. He was an army hospital MP stationed with the 131st general hospital in Blanford, England in 1944 during World War II. He said the thing that he remembers most about his time there was hearing the flying Buzz Bombs. He said you could hear them approaching from the distance and the air raid sirens would soon follow. A year later and few months before he was discharged he was stationed at Camp Sibert in Alabama and made the camp newspaper with the headline, Watch Your Temper, Frank!. The story goes it was one of those hot days in Alabama and he was pulling KP duty washing dishes over a steaming hot sink and the combination of the two took him to the breaking point when he grabbed a new stack of dishes from the long mess line and on top was one that hadn’t been dipped into the hot water pan that he personally set there for just that purpose and my dad started to see red. He yelled “Hey you lugs, holding the dirty dish in the air, don’t you know you’re supposed to dip your dishes in that water before you give them to me? Now, who in the h–l turned in this dish?” With that Lt. Co. Joe C Rude, Chief of the hospitals X-Ray dept., came back from the door, took the dish, dipped it into the hot water and handed back to my dad who, according to the story was perspiring a little more heavily than he had been a few minutes before. He didn’t get into any trouble but made for a funny story. Once again, a shout out to all the service men and women on this Veterans day and if you happen to run into one then how about buying them a drink or as they say over at Froggy… #Pay It Forward!
