I add my heartfelt thanks to all who have served!

I'm glad to see this public thank-you note here, and I add my pixel salute to veterans and military members. Also worth noting are the spouses or significant others who support the military member's decision and takes on running a household, including kids, pets, in-laws, etc., during a tour of duty. Thanks to those who serve, and those who 'only stand and wait'.

A dozen years living with an active duty sailor and I had never heard of Semper Gumby! :biglaugha

Thanks to all who served -- everything we have, we owe to you.

Thanks to all you taxpayers who made it possible...

...and China.

Thank you once again, V. X-Lydia, my loving wife and a Navy retiree, sends her thanks also. It's good to see this old thread again. You may have established a Cellar tradition. (This has, after all, been done at least once. ;))

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May I include my dad in The Royal Gloucester Regiment who saw active service in WW2 and famously and heroically Korea. My kid brother in the same regiment who served with great personal courage in Northern Ireland. My uncle who was lost in the Med, May 1941 when HMS Goucester was bombed off Crete. My great uncle lost on the Somme and who was never found. My older brother Tony lost in the Falkland war, a hero.

And the vets here and serving everywhere, thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Thanks to all for the nice words. And I would like to extend to all my fellow Vets the most sincere thanks for yours and your families sacrifice to service. I know that in my 20+ years of continual active duty my family made great sacrifices for our future. We made it. And thanks to all, esp the families that had some of the greatest burdens of maintaining the home and keeping things moving forward during our deployments. Keep your thoughts and prayers in mind and consider those soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines who are still deployed overseas on missions that are demanded of our nations. Same to all of our overseas friends in the Cellar. Your vets are in my prayers as well.

I leave you all with this....

“In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.”

Here's another poem we had to memorize when I was in the 1st CAV:

Halfway down the trail to Hell,
In a shady meadow green
Are the Souls of all dead troopers camped,
Near a good old-time canteen.
And this eternal resting place
Is known as Fiddlers' Green.

Marching past, straight through to Hell
The Infantry are seen.
Accompanied by the Engineers,
Artillery and Marines,
For none but the shades of Cavalrymen
Dismount at Fiddlers' Green.

Though some go curving down the trail
To seek a warmer scene.
No trooper ever gets to Hell
Ere he's emptied his canteen.
And so rides back to drink again
With friends at Fiddlers' Green.

And so when man and horse go down
Beneath a saber keen,
Or in a roaring charge of fierce melee
You stop a bullet clean,
And the hostiles come to get your scalp,
Just empty your canteen,
And put your pistol to your head
And go to Fiddlers' Green.

And on a final note I leave you with this story of a fallen Marine from Iraq. Moving to anyone with a heart.

http://www.rockymountainnews.com/new.../final-salute/

http://www.photojournalism.org/2005/...t/stories/BOS/

:sniff:

I'd also like to extend my gratitude to Cellar dwellar Tobiasly. Maybe he just never got around to visiting us again after his tour was done, but I have a sinking suspicion he's sacrificed more than we can dream of repaying.