(Bumped up from yesterday.)

My father was a soldier.  He did not set out in life to be one, but the world dictated otherwise back in the satanic onyx days of the early 1940s, and so a soldier he became.  He fought long and well, huddled in his radio operator’s station aboard a B-29 over Japan, focused on the task at hand while thinking about the young bride waiting for him back home again in Indiana.  He did his job, and then he went home.  This is the soldier’s duty, after all: to fight long and well, do their job, and then go home to the place their doing their job had preserved as their home, theirs and everyone else’s home.

Once in a while, my father would speak of those times.  His eyes, usually sharp and clear, would shift to a faraway focus as he spoke of the friends made during those days who didn’t go home.  He would remind me that no story, no pictures, could truly tell their tale.  They, too, performed the soldier’s duty; preserving their home they would not see again.

My brother was a soldier.   He did not set out in life to be one, but the world dictated otherwise back in the man-made insanity of the 1960s, and so a soldier he became.  He fought long and well, trading gunfire with unseen foes hiding in rice paddies and carrying his wounded buddies to safety, not noticing his own wounds until someone else pointed out his blood to him.  He did his job, a job that unlike his father’s was treated with contemptuous scorn, and then he went home.  This is the soldier’s duty, after all: to fight long and well, do their job, and then go home to the place their doing their job had preserved as their home, theirs and everyone else’s home even if the residents of that home hated him for doing his job.

My father now temporarily rests beneath the soil of his Indiana home, peacefully waiting for the day when he and his fellow soldiers will receive their final order to come home to the place their Brother doing His job has preserved as their home.  My brother works in a field not of his choosing, embittered to a degree by the treatment he and his fellow soldiers received from their home yet without hesitation willing to again serve that home should it but ask.

Today, remember my father, and yours.  Remember my brother, and yours.  Remember all the fathers, and brothers, and husbands and sons.  Remember all the mothers, and sisters, and wives and daughters.  Remember all who did not set out in life to be soldiers.  But the world dictated otherwise, and so soldiers they became.  They fought long and well, doing their job, and then they went home.  This is the soldier’s duty, after all: to fight long and well, do their job, and then go home to the place their doing their job has preserved as their home, be it the home they had known before as theirs and everyone else’s, or the promised home their Brother doing His job has preserved as their home.  Remember especially those who entered this promised home while preserving the home they had known before, for without them we would have no home.  Remember them, and honor.

My father was a soldier.