Thank You.

Yesterday was the Marine Corps Birthday and today is Veterans Day so thank you to the Veterans and Active Duty military everywhere, but especially to:

John Kondrup, my grandfather - US Army
Delores Kondrup, my grandmother - US Women's Army Corps
Ivan Dodd, my grandfather - US Army
Jimmy Woodell, my Searcy dad - US Navy
Jim Sanders, my father-in-law - US Army
Jim Pitney, a great man - US Air Force
David Kondrup, my uncle - Seabees
Jimmy Sanders, my husband - US Marine Corps
James Pitney, a great man - US Air Force
Jo Pitney, my brother-in-law - US Air Force
Christopher Sanders, my brother-in-law - US Air Force
Sean Hartsel, in our youth group five years ago - US Army
Josh Woodell, a great man - US Marine Corps
Ashley Richardson, my "little sister" - US Air Force

Last night Jimmy and I went and saw Flags of our Fathers, the movie which tells the story of the men who raised the flag on Iwo Jima - the second time. I never knew this, but the photo we all know from that day, was actually of the second flag raising. The same people didn't do both and so, for a bit, I was worried that it would be a movie about the scandal - as if the men who raised the second flag weren't just as much heroes as the first. That would be like saying the only heroes on 9/11 were the ones the news captured going into the towers. We all know how Americans love their scandal. But it wasn't.

Instead, it told the story of the three men in the photo who lived through the war. When the photo was published, they were pulled from overseas duty to tour the country, asking people to buy war bonds. Not an all bad thing to be doing, it's how the war was paid for, but these men wanted to be with their brothers fighting, not eating dessert sculptures of the moment, topped with strawberry sauce.

The scenes of war made me flinch, made me cry. So I can not even begin to imagine what it sears into the minds of these men - barely men - and the effects those moments have on their lives. I know more now that the things so many people who go to war are haunted by the evils they see there. It convicts me to made a day to honor them more than a day on the calendar.