I don't think any of us reaches middle age without either having done some military service personally, or had family members who did.

It seems to me the majority of people don't give a rip about Veteran's Day, and even fewer participate in them. Among teens and twenty somethings, many don't even know what the day is about. Which I consider to be good. That means the reach of the war propagandists hasn't gotten to them yet. There seems to be a lot of resistance and resentment to the current militarist sentimentalism among the young, who are not only very cynical about it, but also are becoming more and more active and present in the anti-war movement with each passing week. This generation of kids will not go lightly into the dark nights in Baghdad, that is for sure.

In the US, Veteran's Day is really just another day that federal and some state offices are closed, but nobody celebrates really because they still have to work. For civilian society, I should say. For the few people who are veterans and who still strongly see their military service as a major part of who they are, it's a big day. But for veterans who aren't closely identified with the military, and all the rest of us, the day is about big retail sales--banks, schools, and stores are open, and if you watch the evening news, you see the obligatory "Veteran's Day activities" story, but that's it.

I know a lot of vets of all four wars, and none of them "celebrate" this day, though they might talk about something to do with their personal military service in passing. So, is it worth remembering? Yes, to those few who have actually served in the military, and who identify personally with their military service as being a large part of who they are--they seem most often to be career military people, or have had career military people in their families.

But of all the vets I know, while they don't avoid discussions of their service or anything, they have gladly put it in their past, and are quite content to leave it there.