MILITARY PARADE IN ELEVEN ARMY MEDIC VETERAN STEPS

1. Join the service and serve the agreed upon time. USMC, USN, USA, USAF, etc.

2. Go to boot camp. If it’s the hardest thing you’ve ever done the rest of your life, you’re not trying hard enough.

3. Go to school and get qualified to do a military job.

4. Do your job until you get discharged.

5. Go about the rest of your life knowing you made a difference by serving in the armed forces. Learn how to make chipped beef on toast.

6. Listen without comment when others talk about their military experience. Even if it starts sounding like ‘The Audie Murphy Story’ keep quiet.

7. If someone says, “Thank you for your service,” avoid them in the future.

8. When a non-service person wonders out loud how they would have done if they had served, tell them they would have been fine.

9. Don’t judge someone based on their faulty memory of their service.

10. When an older man feels the pull of military might and still wants to participate in some way, they either get into Stolen Valor with medals bought at a thrift store, or try and organize a parade they can salute.

When a draft dodger turns into a military expert, and demands a kiss up from people who’ve dedicated their lives to things military, they get the kiss off. Unless it’s the President of the United States.

Warriors don’t need a parade as much as support staff who dress up like Halloween in the same uniform. But if ordered to do so, a motor pool dispatch sergeant will wear a ‘period uniform’ and march beside a Marine Operator.

11. Since polishing my shoes and shining my brass for the last time in 1976 I’ve had a few parades. The first was coming home for my younger brother’s high school graduation. I flew, took a bus, and hitch hiked to get there, the final leg coming after my older brother’s wife spotted me in their town and gave me a ride. Thanks Karen.

The most current parade came yesterday at the Rogue Brewery in Newport, Oregon in the top pic.

Veterans don’t need a big parade, Mr. President, we have our little ones all the time.

PS: The idea of modeling a military parade after the one in France? With their military might flexing up a storm, it’s probably a bad time to review history.

Cheers to Paris.