Thanksgiving Thoughts from a Deployed Hero

"Well, let me start with Happy Thanksgiving.

As has been the routine of my last couple of years... I found myself today eating an MRE for Thanksgiving dinner in between planning for missions. When I was a PFC, before my first tour, I was in California, training in the dead of winter in a high desert for Iraq in OIF 4. It was a chicken and salsa MRE. cold. Then, I actually did get a thanksgiving the following year. I came home in mid October and remember my mom tearing at the dinner table because she was thankful, as well as I, that I had made it home alive. Then, the following year I was on a boat, and I don’t think that I was able to call or email home for about 60 days because we were running missions in Somalia and Bangladesh. Now here I am. Today I had a lasagna MRE for dinner as Isat in the office alone, letting my guys get some rest before the mission and I was getting the logistics together. My thoughts always drift home. Pumpkin beer, cold winters, fires in the fire place, football, stuffing my face until I can't sit up, family, being in a safe place where I don’t have to be on guard, or worry about if my other marines are ok... are we, ok?

My mother wrote me an email saying that she feels like her emails are boring in comparison to mylife, and doesn’t know what to say.... so she writes of home and the things I described. But what she doesn’t realize is that all thosethings bring me closer to home. Even an email with one sentence in it saying hello, tells me I am not forgotten and left in this dark world that has been the last 4 years of my life. So this thanksgiving I am thankful for that. Thankful that someone out there cares about me enough to remind me of what I love about home and that if I can just keep pushing, I can make it home and experience these things again, without the weight of the world on my shoulders.

Love Ben"

Happy Thanksgiving!

Wishing everyone a safe and Happy Thanksgiving! As we are giving are thanks today, please remember those who cannot be with their families during this holiday season.

http://www.cpmsglife.org/tg/td1.html

SERO Can Food Drive

You may have read in DAILY that the local ERGs are sponsoring a can food drive to help the Food Bank of NC. The event is sponsored by the African American Resource Group with their hopes that all the local ERG's would participate and promote this worthy cause. Collection started November 24 and will run through December 15th. The collection box is in the cafeteria. Please do all you can to make this joint venture a success!

Sponsoring Families for the Holidays

We have an opportunity to provide a little assistance to two military families enduring financial hardships. If you would like specific information on how to contribute, please send an email to vmerg.sero@aa.com Please help bring a ray of sunlight to these families.

Lets Say Thanks!

The VMERG would like to make you aware of a great opportunity for employees and their families to show "Thanks", just in time for Thanksgiving! Xerox has partnered with Give2TheTroops, the Boys and Girls Clubs and many printing companies to sponsor this site. The cards have been created by kids all over the country.

If you go to the website, www.LetsSayThanks.com, you can pick out a thank you card and Xerox will print it and send to a soldier that is currently serving in Iraq. You can't pick out who gets it, but it will go to a member of the armed services.

How AMAZING it would be to get this message to everyone we know to send one!!! This is a great site. Please send a card. It is FREE and really only takes a second.

American Airlines adds Yellow Ribbons to aircraft

Please check out this you tube video of the ceremony

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPfSkzZjGgY

Thank You to all Our Veterans!

Happy Veteran's Day to all of our heroes! November 11th each year is an official day to recognize and thank all of those who have served our great country. I believe everyday is a day to recognize our brave men and women in uniform.

Have you thanked a veteran today?