Veterans Day: A Soldier and Children’s Author Celebrates

In honor of Veterans Day, we asked Flashlight author and US Army Major Thad Krasnesky to share some of his thoughts on being a children’s author and on serving in the military. This is the first in a series of posts from our authors, illustrators, and other Flashlight folk on the holidays.

"Some people find it odd to reconcile the image of a children’s writer with the image that they have of a soldier. I love being able to create that conflict in people’s minds."

by: Thad Krasnesky

Veterans Day is a wonderful time here at West Point.  Although any holiday celebrating the soldier cannot be far removed from the more serious side of the occupation, it is a much less solemn occasion than Memorial Day.  Veterans Day is a celebration of life and a remembrance of victory.  More importantly for the soldier, it commemorates the end of war.  Although some people think that soldiers long for war, this is simply not the case.  There are violent people in any occupation.  Certainly there are some among the ranks of the soldier.  The true soldier however, the one who practices the profession of arms and is not simply a hired gun, longs for peace.  Douglas Macarthur, a West Point graduate and a leader of character once said, “The soldier, above all other people, prays for peace, for he must suffer and bear the deepest wounds and scars of war.”  Dwight Eisenhower, another West Point graduate and distinguished leader said, “I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its stupidity.”  Veterans Day remembers that moment in time, when soldiers on both sides of the line in WWI were able to lay down their weapons.  The day that they said, “This many deaths, but no more.”