Veterans Day 2017

My earliest memories are of War...

...surviving in a cold basement apartment with two younger brothers and just enough food to eat, carefully scraped, by my mother, shuffling pennies and ration stamps, while my father was “overseas”.

Whenever I was downtown in my hometown of Logan, Utah, I watched young men from nearby Bushnell Army Hospital struggle to get off the army bus, with missing arms and legs. 

My Uncle Grant was a radio operator on a half-track in the second wave at the Battle of Leyte Gulf in the Philippines. He survived, returned home, but was plagued with malaria the rest of his life.

My Uncle Don fought across France and into Germany, with Patton’s Third Army, received a Battlefield Commission, returned home with a chest full of medals and what we now call PTSD. 

The day I was married September 18, 1961 my unit, 889th QM CO, was activated during the Berlin Crisis. Three members of my Company were killed in an accident and I returned with a  permanent hearing loss that I live with every day. 

My cousin, Ray G. Jenkins, who I grew up with, was killed February 28, 1968, Ba Xugen Province, South Vietnam as he ran to his helicopter durning a rocket attack. His name is on “The Wall”. 

I currently have a grandson, Ian Hardy, on standby in the National Guard. 

This is just a minuscule piece of the horrendous sacrifices made to keep—

“...our flag...still there.”

When a man with no military service and in the top one-percent in income kneels during the

National Anthem in violation of NFL rules (Sports is about Rules) which he agreed to, and the NFL sits on its hands, I’m no longer a NFL - 49er fan. 

And, I will never attend, or watch on TV, an NFL game again, collage football yes, NFL NO!

“... long may it wave o’er the land of the free and the home of the brave! ”

Carpe Diem,

Carl Rich