The Big Sandy Mountaineer -

Certainly of all the American wars, the worst was the Civil War which pitted American against American and there was an enormous amount of blood shed on our own land.

After that war many Confederates came to Montana to start a new life in the west. Their graves and those of Union soldiers were some of the first graves tended to on Decoration Day in Montana. That war was not that long ago. When the Blackwood family came to ranch on Clear Creek, they had one of their former slaves with them. He was free but did not want to leave the family he loved.

Long before that many Native Americans shed much blood as did US soldiers when the Indian wars raged on in the west. In what is now Montana there were many battle grounds, now unmarked but somehow as precious for us living here now, as those of our soldiers that are marked and honored each year.

Don’t forget the Spanish-American War. Only historians remember what that one was all about. The blood shed by American soldiers was as important as that shed in any war!

World War I was where Veterans Day got its start in the United States. This war, fought to end all other wars and also known as the Great War was a war in which there was much United States blood shed overseas. Armistice Day for that day was the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month. To this day that is when veterans of all wars are honored throughout all of the United States.

This was the war to end all wars. Therefore it was unbelievable that a few years later the United States was at it again as World War II started when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. Many US soldiers are buried overseas. Some came home with what was then called shell shock. Those people were never the same again. In Havre one young veteran, Bob Keisling, came home blind. He sold magazines in the post office lobby for years. He had the uncanny ability to recognize people by the sound of their feet on the post office floor.

Then it was Korea, which was called a police action, but it was a very real war for those who fought in it. We were fighting the communists to make the entire world safe for democracy during that war. There was, again, much American blood shed.

Same with Vietnam. Same war, same principle, only in jungles rather that mountains. And by the time that war had ended the American people were so tired of war that soldiers coming home from Vietnam were never given the honor they deserved.

Iraq was the same sort of a war but by then even the country had turned confused as to why the war was being fought and what was to be the outcome. No one was confused about the bodies of American men and women who came home from that war.

Afghanistan became another war zone that is with us yet today. Again, confused results but no dearth of blood, once again, shed by American men and women in that far off place.

I did not mention the many skirmishes and short battles that ended in loss of life for Americans as well.

All this is about is a litany of the generosity of Americans who willingly go overseas and work and give their lives so small countries are safer and we are safer here at home as well.

It is all those people from all those years of wars that we honor not just on Veteran’s Day but every day that “Old Glory” waves across the plains and peaks of this grand place called Montana!

Hurrah for the Red, White and Blue!