I often wear a black baseball cap with its muted U.S. Army star. I do so because I'm proud to have been an American soldier though it's been now nearly 60 years hence. Still, it warms me when strangers stop, turn and say, "Thank you for your service."

The warmth comes because my service, whatever little value it had, includes me in a long, shadowy legion of fellow citizen-soldiers.

I number among them a great-grandfather wounded and imprisoned in the Civil War, a grandpa who patrolled in the Philippines and later helped guard the U.S. Legation in Beijing, my dad who spent two years in the South Pacific with the Navy, several brothers-in-law, Marines, seriously wounded in Korea and Vietnam, a brother and nephew in Special Forces, and another ground-pounder who led combat patrols in Fallujah.

But these my relatives in turn are only a tiny sample of the American citizen-soldiers who have served the United States over the past 250 years.

As Shakespeare put it in Henry V:
‍We few, we happy few, we band of brothers.

Why did any of us serve? I suspect in many cases we joined the colors because we were naive kids who sought adventure or wanted to see whether we could cut it.

And when the time came at the point of the spear, our sergeants, our training and our pride of unit—our own little band of brothers—enabled us to cut it. We were there on St. Crispin's Day.

And now we geezer veterans look with affection, pride and sympathy upon the strained faces of young women and men still readjusting to civilian life after the gritty, scary and often deadly months they endured in the mid-east.

God bless them all and, please, please, thank them for their service.

“Remember those who served before.
Remember those who are no more.
Remember those who served today.  
Remember them all on Memorial Day.”
—Emily Toma

Reflecting today on the lives sacrificed so we can be free.