Memorial Day Thoughts

Memorial Day is a time for remembering and honoring those who made the ultimate sacrifice for our country. There are but a few WWI vets remaining today. WWII and Korea vets are beginning to dwindle. Viet Nam was the first war that included the American Baby Boomer. It was a long conflict. It started while I was in grade school, and there were people my age who fought there toward the end.
My life has been fairly well insulated from wartime tragedy. There were classmates of mine from kindergarten through 3rd or 4th grade, fraternal twins, boy and girl. They moved away because their father was in the army. We got the news a year later that he had been killed in Viet Nam. This was the closest the war's casualties ever came to me.
A few years later, my uncle married a Viet Nam widow. She and her first husband, a military pilot had just adopted four orphaned siblings, when he was sent to 'Nam. He was shot down and killed over there.
Those are the only two people that I had any connection to who died in Viet Nam.