On Veterans Day, I usually put up a Facebook photo of my Dad while he was serving in the Army Air Corps, WW II. I have a handful of them–in front of planes, in his radio gunner seat on the plane, in his flight suit and helmet, and so on. In each of them, he looks young and handsome, and determined– a man I didn’t know, just starting what would become his imperfect adult life.

My dad enlisted in the Army shortly after Pearl Harbor, early in 1942. He was 20 years old, and had been knocking around in Muskegon after dropping out of high school at 16. He did the usual entrance screening and tests, and was pulled out of the pack and offered a chance to be part of the Air Corps, which would involve special training to fly combat missions. The Air Corps was transitioning at the time, to what would become the Air Force, and my dad was thrilled to be going off into the wild blue yonder. In this case, the Pacific theater.

His leaving school at 16 to go to work wasn’t a function of academic failure, by the way. My father was one of the smartest people I know, a quick and canny intellect. He was also belligerent and impulsive and emphatically did not like being told what to do. He told me many times that the only teacher he respected and the only class he loved was his band director and playing in the Muskegon HS Band. He quit school because, other than music, he wasn’t learning anything. (Yes, I see the irony.)

His four years in the military were tumultuous. His plane was shot down and floated for days in the Sea of Japan, eventually rescued by an Australian submarine. All crew members survived. His brother Don (pictured, below) was killed in the first wave of Marines on Iwo Jima, in February, 1945, at the age of 19, after which my dad went AWOL, hitching rides to Iwo Jima to ‘see for himself.’ Returning to his unit, he was busted down to Private, although he was honorably discharged as a PFC.

The picture of my dad, with his younger brother, Burt, was taken on my grandparents’ back stoop after he returned home: the admiring younger brother and the Man Who Has Seen Too Much. The photo says it all.

Today, on Veterans Day, I want to honor all the men and women who came home, bringing all the trauma of war with them. The folks who tried to forget, but couldn’t. The ones whose wives warned their children: Don’t ask Dad about the war.

Our country was built on sacrifice. It would serve us all well to remember that, every day.