USS Midway, San Diego, CA

I attended the Remembrance Day ceremony at the cenotaph in the village where I grew up - I was 10 when World War II began in '39, 16 when it ended in '45.

At the time of the Korean "Police Action", I wondered about signing up, especially since neither my grandfather nor father (who was 13 in 1914) had been in the military, but I was busy at university, and the Korean issue was not a huge issue, as World War II had been, five and more years earlier.

In my last year of seminary, a call came out from our national church for missionaries to go to Africa or Korea, and I signed up for Korea, where a good deal of our activities were helping refugees get back to living a reasonably normal life (in their context).

At the end of the gathering today, I said we are here today to pay tribute to the ones who died in battle, Recruits for military service are required to be in top physical, mental and spiritual/emotional condition, and the ones who died in battle were called upon to give up their life on that one occasion ... but that many who survived came home broken, whether in body, mind or spirit/emotion.

It seems to me that any society which considers itself civilized would feel compelled to take care of its members who had suffered such a calamity, and that we have tended to cut back on the numbers who qualify, and to reduce some of their pensions, and that we ought to be ashamed of having taken such an inconsiderate path.

Recently our government decided to offer a number in that position a one-time settlement of, mainly, $250,000. dollars. If one invests that money at 4%, it produces about $10,000. a year: at 3% - $7,500. I've asked some of our local Members of Parliament whether they know how one can live on such an amount. One said that that amount wasn't set in stone ... that it could be up to three million dollars ... to which I replied that both he and I knew that a very small percentage of the total number receiving such support might qualify for anywhere near that amount.

At the gathering for lunch at the veterans' hall afterwards, one of the vets said that it might well take a good portion of the $250,000. to alter one's home sufficiently to be accessible.

ole joyful

I like what you said, so much is very true even down here in the states.