Empty Chairs at Holiday Tables (xpost from Veterans)

[unhappycamper]

Empty Chairs at Holiday Tables
Joe Galloway | December 24, 2008

Even in hard times, this is the holiday season and a time when thoughts turn to home and family and dinner tables covered with food and gaily wrapped presents and bright lights.

Save a moment amid the celebrations to give thought to the hundreds of thousands of men and women in uniform in far-flung parts of this world who won't be sitting down to dinner with their families.

More than 170,000 men and women of our military will spend their Christmas and New Year's in Iraq and Afghanistan, where killing and dying never take a day off.

Oh, Uncle Sam will do his best to see that most of them sit down to a special dinner of hot turkey and dressing and all the trimmings, and even in the most remote outpost some soldier or Marine will jury-rig a tree of sorts with decorations of sorts.

But it's a hollow celebration for a lonely Soldier so far from home and loved ones, and lonely, too, at that dinner table back home where a chair stands empty at the head of the table.


Rest of article at: http://www.military.com/opinion/0,15202,181778,00.html?wh=news

[Zywiec]

1. Thanks for the post - I wish all their families well. n/t

[JohnnyLib2]

2. Great reminder, thanks.

I live and work near Ft. Knox. There are hundred of such families here, some military and some with civilian workers in Iraq and Afghanistan. Some families are remarkably resilient; some are hurting badly.

"Take a moment......"

Rec.