This op-ed originally was published in the Oct. 28 edition of
the Winston-Salem Journal.
I cannot count the number of times someone has told me,
"Thank you for your service," nor how many times I was
embarrassed yet grateful to hear it.
I am usually in military uniform when the thank-you comes, so I
try to handle it gracefully. I do not welcome it, but it always
seems sincere, so I cannot merely swat it away.
"Thank you for your service" is our society's
hard-learned lesson that Americans treated the veterans of the
unpopular Vietnam War horribly. Many criticize the line as a
shallow recognition by people who have not served, but that itself
is a superficial judgment.
More than one veteran has told me that he or she was spit on or
cursed at when in uniform in the early 1970s. In Ken Burns'
recent PBS series "The Vietnam War," a woman who
vigorously protested the war admits, with genuine sincerity and
emotion, that she and her fellow protesters were wrong in
