My Favorite Veteran

Growing up, everyone's Dad was a GI

Except mine

Oh, he went to war all right

But it wasn't WW 2

it was "The Great War"

now known as World War I

As a remembrance of his service

He was given this engraving

Of the Goddess Columbia

"knighting" a Doughboy

with the inscription

"Columbia Gives To Her Son

The Accolade of the

New Chivalry of Humanity"

Not every WW I vet received one of these

Only the ones that were wounded.

For in "The Great War" there was no Purple Heart

That came later

That came in World War II

Dad was wounded in the Battle of the Argonne Forest

the papers say "slightly"

which I don't really understand.

Perhaps he was wounded and patched on the battlefield

And sent back to battle once more

rather than having to be transported to a Field Hospital

and considered "really" wounded!

Dad always told me that he had been hit by a cannonball.

As a child, I believed him

But as an adult, I know that that was impossible.

Shrapnel perhaps, but not the ball itself.

And before, he was sent to France,

Dad also was sent to the Mexican Border

at the time of Pancho Villa.

He never mentioned that part of his military.

Dad was my hero

And I was proud in a sea of GI kids, to be the lone child of a doughboy

It's Veteran's Day

The day we honor all veterans,

The day I honor my Dad

My favorite veteran!