Veterans Day – November 11, 2020

It was nice weather today, no longer unseasonably warm. Everything here continues as usual, but as it is a holiday celebrating military service, I will pause and think of many veterans in my own orbit. Primarily, my personal veteran, Harry. Veterans Day was Armistice Day, commemorating the finish of World War I at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of 1918. The last global pandemic was surging then, as Covid-19 is surging now. Plus ça change…

But in the 1960s there was Viet Nam…

• 

• 

My father and his brothers all served in World War II. Brian and Uncle Pete in the Royal Navy, as Engineering Officers, Uncle Mike in the RAF. All three survived. Mike was the first man to land on a “bridge too far” at Arnhem, where he was wounded and taken prisoner by the Germans. All of the Barry boys lived into the twenty-first century.

• 

My American Quetsch uncles, Leonard, Dick, Bill, Jack, and Jim were Korean era veterans.

The Barry veterans go back another generation to World War I, in which conflict my grandfather and two brothers were decorated veterans. Great Uncle Gerard Barry lost a leg and won the Croix de Guerre. He was killed by friendly fire in 1921. James, my grandfather, who was blind in his right eye, as a result of an archery accident when a youth, was a medical officer and won the Military Cross and DSO. I have fond memories of him from my early youth. Great Uncle John, who helped to set me on my life’s path with a passion for horses, retired a Brigadier General. He was seriously wounded at Passchendaele and won the DSO at age 27. I knew him in his eighties.

• 

So, we are grateful to them, and to all who have done their duty.

• 

• 

• 

Stay safe, stay well, stay grateful.