I’ve been asked if I planned on returning to Arlington Cemetery for Veterans Day, so I’d like to share a few thoughts on what I think we civilians can do today! While I went to Arlington today, I’ll focus my public efforts on Memorial Day for a few reasons...(Thread)

Memorial Day is for the fallen — the lives lost, the warriors we Americans never got the chance to know. I read and re-read the obituaries of many of the graves I visited earlier this year, but I’ll never know those men and women. The best I can do is share their names...

But Veterans Day is for the living — those who served and continue to serve. So I think the best thing a civilian can do on Veterans Day is to ask the vets in your life about their service. For me, that’s my daughter and brother, pictured here at her commissioning...

Call them up and ask them about why they joined, their training, their first deployment. The lifelong friends they made, or the ones that they lost. That one dumbass commander they had, or the time they screwed something up in the field...

My 2LT daughter and I laugh about how her job as a platoon leader is to inspire her soldiers by threatening to “make shit stupid as fuck,” and my brother tells a hilarious story about the time a bunch of dumbass marines almost blew him up by accident in a training exercise...

I still visit Arlington on Veterans Day because my grandfather has passed on. But the truth is, I wish he was still living so I could ask him those same questions about his long Army career and the three wars he fought in...

So I’m looking forward to visiting Arlington for all of you again on Memorial Day. But today, I just went to see one COL. Here he is, where he rests at the corner of MacArthur and Patton.