I seen jfan's amazing pics, I seen the Roadrunner's wonderful photographs, I seen modest's memorial photos (last one was superb, modest) --- but there are millions here who've been fighting a war they know they can't win, generation after generation. Ever fought a war you know you'll never win, Double R ?? It can make the strongest turn to jelly.
Yet, for hundreds of years, the once-richest nation in the world has been systematically stripped of her uncountable wealth by a succession of foreign invaders, who've left in their wake some of the poorest and yet some of the noblest veterans of this unholy war.
This post is therefore a tribute to these veterans -- survivors of an unending battle against poverty, aided and abetted by a succession of governments that mouth platitudes, skim the cream and leave the poor toiling in the mud.

Well I didn't get half way down page one without a tear! Thank you RR and Subroto for your elequence and accompanying pictures.

My hero - my dad. Ran away to sea from a small Scottish hamlet at 15 years of age and spent six years in the Merchant Navy on the North Atlantic Run. Torpedo'd twice and once spent 10 days in a half submerged life raft. That's all I know, most "Vets" don't like to talk much, although I did get to hear of more than one memorable bar room brawl! He probably still holds the record today for the youngest person to obtain his Master's Ticket at 24 yrs old. He became a Trinity House Pilot and maintained his crowning pinnacle was piloting the Tall Ship - The Danmark - out of Falmouth harbour under full sail in 1966 - this picture was taken on board. Sadly he lost his life just short of 50, trying to board a crippled ferry with hundreds of people on board in storm force conditions. The second picture shows the pilot cutter the L.K.Mitchell so named in his honour, which is still in active service in Falmouth today 38yrs after he was killed and is regarded by all that use her services as safe, solid and inordinately dependable:0)

I have a picture somewhere of my son at three years of age at the helm of a boat in 1998 at the start of another Tall Ships race from Falmouth. The pilot cutter is on the horizon coming towards us - wheels within wheels and the inexorable circle of life!

sometimes you just have to say it and IM GLAD YOU DID.

I do not have a long heritage of Veterans in my family. My paternal grandfather served in WW! in the Royal Canadian Army. My father was exempted as his brother enlisted in WWII and at the time, one son could be left to care for the family (that was what I was told). That would have been my Dad. My uncle had never married and was young (early 20s). He had saved all the $ he had made in a few years as an administrative secretary to Fischer (of the Fischer Body Company in Detroit, MI) No one knew what Uncle Bill had done - enlisting, saving his money. On the day he left, he gave his younger brother, my Dad, a briefcase which held all the $$ he'd saved saying something like, "Of all of us 4, you are the one to go to college and this will help". My Dad ended up going to Michigan Tech and earning a degree in Electrical Engineering. You have cable TV today partly because of him. After he died, I learned from his cronies, how instrumental my father was in not only Cable TV but in the design and laying of transatlantic cable. So he served his country in other ways.

My husband served in the Viet Nam years - teaching GIs how to build air strips. He never saw Viet Nam - at the very last minute his orders were changed. His brother in law was one of many who served and returned changed forever and still dealing with PTSD.

Hmm. Never meant to carry on…(Nan, I'm talking and I can't shut up!)