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Veterans Day    

11 November 2024

This old print barely survived a flood. The fountain pen ink identified everyone in Platoon 68 of the U.S. Marine Corps in San Diego in 1945 except one private. That was our father, who wrote down the names of his fellow Marines.

They were training for the invasion of Japan, which was the plan before Truman opted to drop nuclear bombs on the country. None of them likely would have survived the assault.

They had one other thing in common.

Everyone who has ever served in any branch of the U.S. military has taken an oath upon enlistment. The oath, mandated by the U.S. Code, is worth reading:

I, [name], do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God.

Allegiance, in short, is to the law not a person. If even the president issues an unconstituional order, the soldier's role is not to obey the president but to defend the constitution against that domestic enemy breaking it.

The defense German soldiers used after World War II against crimes against humanity of "just following orders" doesn't fly in the United States. More is expected of everyone in a U.S. uniform.

We take some comfort in that thought on this Veterans Day.

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