GaryOsberg.com

Today is Veterans Day. It was first known as Armistice Day, a day commemorating the cessation of hostilities on the Western Front in Europe, at eleven o’clock am on the eleventh day of the eleventh month in the year 1918. In many parts of the world, people observe a two minute moment of silence at 11 am as a sign of respect for the roughly 20 million people who died in the “war to end all wars”. I plan to visit the grave site of my father and my uncle at the Gethsemane Church Cemetery in Upsala. I used to visit a couple of vets who lived in Mother of Mercy in Albany. Aymer Nelson passed away in 2017 at age 104. Aymer took part in the landing at Normandy Beach on D Day and he fought in the Battle of the Bulge. Bob Holmen Sr was on a destroyer in the Pacific. I miss them both.

My dad, Bill Osberg, served in the Pacific theatre on the USS Vammen. He was a radar operator, spending many hours in a small room on a “tin can” while the fighting raged around him. In one of his journals he wrote: “The two months at Okinawa were hell.”

We owe a great deal of thanks to all of those men and women who fought to protect this country. War is hell, but the warriors are to be honored. When you meet a man or women in uniform, simply offer them your hand and say, “Thank you for serving”.

If you would like to learn about the five awesome paintings created by Charles Kapsner that honor all veterans, simply go to www.vetsart.org   The paintings hang in the Committal Hall at the Minnesota

State Veterans Cemetery located off of Highway 371 north of Little Falls.   You can call 320-616-2527 to find out what the hours of operation are. 

“Success is how high you bounce when you hit bottom.” George S. Patton