It’s Veterans Week and for the third consecutive year I am writing an article that I hope will appear in local papers during this Veterans Week. I wish other of my comrades would also express their views or write their stories at this time. I am sure local feature editors would welcome the opportunity to fill space in their Veterans Week editions.

It’s a time of very mixed emotions for me. There are the highs associated with being thanked for my service to my country by my fellow citizens. It happened to me and to my comrades in VFW Post 9949 as we distributed Buddy Poppies in front of business establishments in Peachtree City this past Saturday.

These feelings will be magnified when my comrades in VFW Post 9949 and I and other veterans and active military attend the tribute in our honor at Huddleston Elementary School on Friday morning. I am sure this is also happening at other schools across our nation.

Again on Monday evening Nov. 14 all veterans and current military will be honored and thanked with a free dinner from 5 to 9 p.m. at Golden Corral Restaurants all across this great nation of ours. I plan to partake of this gracious offer in New Bern, N.C., again this year.

The lows of course include the realization of my own mortality as I stand for honors knowing that nearly 80 percent of those who served with me during World War II are now deceased. In just a short while we will all have passed into eternity.

I am moved to sorrow and pity when I visit the veterans and the wives and widows of veterans who reside in Southland Nursing Home and I see their various afflictions and maladies.

I am hurt when I see my comrades in arms from Vietnam and I recall how shamefully they were treated as they returned from honorably serving their nation and all its citizens. I can only image the old wounds that were opened as the presidential races reminded them of that dreadful Vietnam era.

I am so thankful to comrade Frank Hyde for inviting me to join VFW Post 9949 in late 1999. I hope that my service in this wonderful organization is in keeping with our motto, “Honoring the dead by serving the living.”

On Friday we’ll do just that by presenting a Veterans Day Program to all the residents in Southland Nursing Home and by being present at a brief Veterans Day Ceremony at 7:30 a.m. near the PTC Veterans Memorial.

I sent e-mail to my comrades in Post 9949 last night urging them to participate in some of our Veterans Day activities. I told them to stand tall and wear their VFW caps or some other token that tells everyone they are proud veterans who unselfishly served his/her nation.

I then challenge you my fellow citizens to show your appreciation by shaking the hands of these identified veterans and saying, “Thanks for serving your nation.” I challenge each of you to shake more hands of veterans than i do on this our day.

If I were a Marine I would sign off with “Semper fi,” but instead I’ll just say, “Anchors away.”

Bob Konrad
World War II U.S. Navy veteran
VFW Post 9949 Quartermaster
Peachtree City, Ga.

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