Veterans Day
Today is Veterans Day, the day we annually take a moment to pay tribute to all those who wore the uniform…so some of us did not have to. The sacrifice and dedication–not only of the person in uniform but their families and friends as well–deserves our thanks and respect more than just a single day out of the year.
To give you a sense of this from an Iowa perspective, I dug up some numbers.
More than half of Iowa’s military age population served in the Civil War, shortly after Iowa became a state. 76,000 Iowans were in uniform then, with 13,000 never returning home.
In World War I, the U.S. relied on 114,000 Iowans to serve, with 3,500 of them dying in service to our nation.
The Second World War saw 276,000 Iowans in uniform, with nearly 8,400 perishing.
The Korean conflict led to 85,000 Iowans serving, with just more than 500 being killed in action.
In Vietnam, the number serving was 115,000, with more than 850 making the ultimate sacrifice.
Operation Desert Storm saw 3,050 Iowans deployed, with 6 being killed.
Since then, in the overall War on Terrorism, some 20,000 uniformed Iowans responded to the call, with close to 100 never coming home.
Do the math, and more than 689,000 Iowans have served their country in uniform during active conflicts. More than 26,000 died.
If all that is not enough to justify taking just a moment today to shake the hand of a veteran, or give thanks for those who have passed…I don’t know what else could.
