| | |  Vallarta Living | May 2009 
Remember Our Vets This Memorial Day
 David Lord - PVNN
To date, 4,301 American soldiers, Marines, airmen, sailors and Coast Guardsmen have died and 31,285 U.S. troops have been wounded in action since the ongoing military campaign known as the Iraq War, the Second Persian Gulf War, the Occupation of Iraq, or Operation Iraqi Freedom, began on March 20, 2003. As this excerpt from the post-Memorial Day article David wrote back in 2007 still holds true, we are posting it again in honor of those who have sacrificed their lives on the principles instilled in them by living in America.
Memorial Day - Did You Remember?
Did you remember to give a moment of silence and show respect for the Veterans who have died on this Memorial Day? Understanding they sacrificed their lives on the principles instilled in them by living in America?
In this war, often their death was not an act of heroism facing a fixed position, it was the result of simply doing their duty as a soldier, airman, marine or sailor and being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
They have been called to risk their lives time and time again, they are the part time citizen soldiers, closer to civilians than career military, doing only two weeks of training a year in the National Guard
The Revolutionary War of Independence was fought by citizen soldiers too, forever remembered as Patriots. Imagine them seeing this war today, imagine what a Patriot would do in this situation.
They fought on home ground for their nearby families, and volunteered for the few years of the Revolutionary War, often returning to family and farm during the war period, then returning to duty with General Washington as needed.
Cast that against our volunteer soldiers today, who fight as foreigners in an Arab nation thousands of miles away, in a nation that views them as an occupying force at best. Then enduring thirteen to eighteen months of duty not once but two, three, four, five times - and each time it is more dangerous than before.
Your family and friends sympathize and try to hold on but move apart bit by bit because you are far away. You are changed by the continuous separation and stress of war, your not the same as you were, now rough and crude, just a shadow of your former self that's turned edgy, annoyed and isolated, rather than connected to love ones.
The cruelty of it is beyond understanding, what you and I allow to happen to our sons and daughters in the name of America we would not do to a stray dog on the street. Your detachment from this War was planned out, there was no draft because if everyone had to serve in our military in Iraq there would have been mass riot in our streets.
Be guided by this thought: at no other time in our history has your good name as an American Citizen been dragged through the muddy murkiness of an undefined War that requires unprecedented sacrifice by volunteers.
 David Lord has been a National Veterans Service Officer doing veteran's benefits in Mexico for over a decade. Retired from the USMC, David received a Presidential Unit Citation for serving as a rifleman with the 1/26th 5th Marine Division at Khe Sanh Combat Base in Viet Nam in 1968, and a Purple Heart for the resulting gunshot wound. The medical and compensation benefits he has received from the Veterans Administration has played a critical role in David's life, and he uses his personal experience in the claims process along with his legal accreditation by the Department of Veterans Affairs and connections with congressional approved Veterans Organizations to steer veterans and dependents through the maze of regulations and entitlements due them from military service. For more information, email him at david.lord(at)yahoo.com.
Click HERE for more Veteran Affairs with David Lord |
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