How was your Fourth of July this year?

How was your Fourth of July this year?

Mine was great.  The Fourth is my favorite holiday.  It is at a better time of year than most for me (I like the hot weather) and contains fewer of the commercial pressures that we’ve put on other holidays. There are no religious overtones one way or another and even FOX news hasn’t started a “War on the Fourth” campaign that I know of.

I like the patriotic music so much that I tape “A Capitol Fourth” on PBS to play back later and have to fit at least one 1812 Overture in there someplace.  I love watching fireworks but am satisfied to let others risk burning down apartment hedges and expensive telephone cables (not that I’d know anything about that).  This year I wasn’t even subjected to some singer trying to imitate a crack addicts’ warbling of the Star Spangled Banner.  Just sing it please, and let me hear those horns and drums.

This year I visited the Fort Hood Freedom Fest, even ran in the little 5K Run/Walk sponsored by the post.  It’s a great little carnival and celebration of the troops and family readiness groups that hawk drinks and ice cream.  They even had Captain America walking around the fairground. The marvelous First Cavalry Division Horse Detachment rode an impressive demo.  There was an impressive skateboarding demonstration including Jon Comer, an inspirational and talented skater who has a prosthetic leg.

I had a great cookout supper with old friends from my Army days.  I was able to brag about my daughter preparing to graduate from Advanced Individual Training at Fort Leonard Wood and we laughed and admired motorcycles and tattoos.  We missed those separated by distance, like the great Shane in Iowa.  He used his GI Bill to get an education and is a manager in a factory, involved in his community, about to be married, and is living the story of America’s newest Greatest Generation.  We missed troop commanders, platoon leaders, and the squadron commander, training thousands of others in California and about the finest officer one could imagine.  We told stories of the greatest command sergeant major to ever exaggerate a story or shout “woo-hoo” as he ran to the sounds of the guns.  Any gun. Any where!

In a scene typical of probably too many military reunions we encouraged and listened to the youngest trooper at the table.  Blown up twice in the same day in January 2007, he struggles with Post Traumatic Stress and other injuries.  There was a sense of fatalism about him.  ”I think the VA is just trying to wait me out,” he said, holding his daughter from a marriage struggling with the changes that he’d undergone.  We’d each had our own experiences with the VA and they cover a wide range.  I’ve been extremely well treated by the VA and even the recommendations made that I was highly dubious about have proved to be true.  Tom’s now into his second year of waiting for an appeal to a case where the VA’s ratings disagreed with their own recommendations.  It’s ridiculous and shouldn’t happen in a modern system.  The same for my friend Adam, who has proved the worth of the Vocational Rehab program by attending the Motorcycle Mechanics Institute and becoming immediately employable and highly praised.  But when he sought medical care covered under the program, the Corpus Christi VA clinic wouldn’t even in-process him properly.

Between the ribbing and the ribs, each of shared some part of our story with Ryan.  And he seemed to take a little heart.  I don’t know how his story will turn out. He has many struggles ahead, but I thought it was good that men decades older than him would share their stories and tears and medicine troubles to support and encourage him. And he seemed to listen and to lighten up just a bit. He proudly told me about his IAVA shirt and I was happy to tell them about the Padres game and the Miller HighLife promotion and the legislative trips and fixes planned.  In many ways, this small group hit so many of the notes that IAVA tries to play.

It’s been seven years for me since my Fourth was spent sleeping on a HMMWV hood and we were putting together our first hot meal in Iraq.  It’s not been seven since Leif Nott died in a hail of fire down the road from that HMMWV or Chris Cutchall was hit by an IED riding in an unarmored HMMWV.  For the nearly quarter million American troops spread around the world and not eating Adam and Addy’s chicken and banana pudding, it might have been a trying day.  But for me, it was a great Fourth of July and I am very grateful to everyone that made it possible.