Dean's World

Veteran's Day is tomorrow.

Thank you.

Today is Remembrance Day in Canada, which is basically the same as Veteran's Day in the US.

It has become fashionable in recent decades to denigrate the Canadian military, but in truth the Canadians were for a very long time known as some of the fiercest and most dangerous fighters in the West. They were sometimes small in number but in World War I and World War II the Canadians often proved themselves some of the most dangerous and valiant warriors the world had ever known.

Michael Demmons remembers.

I salute the brave and valiant Canadian veterans.

(I will quite seriously kick the ass of any Dean's World commenter who makes so much as a small joke about it by the way.)

Update:

High Flight

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds - and done a hundred things

You have not dreamed of - wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.

Up, up the long delirious, burning blue,
I've topped the windswept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or even eagle flew -
And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod
The high untresspassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand and touched the face of God.

Pilot Officer Gillespie Magee
Number 412 fighter squadron, Royal Canadian Air Force
Died in the air on 11 December 1941 at the age of 19