Today is Veterans Day.

Dorette Kerian and I would like to be among the first to salute our active duty and retired Army, Air Force, Navy, and Maine Corps men and women.

I didn’t serve in the military. In 1966, I volunteered for the draft but was rejected because of bad eyesight. They told me I would be contacted to do alternate service, but it never happened.

Two of my uncles, Tom Vogel and my namesake David Vogel, were in the Navy during World War II. They experienced combat but survived, unlike a cousin and two friends who served during the Vietnam War.

Whenever I’m in Washington, D.C., I stop at the Vietnam War Memorial Wall to pay homage to my cousin, U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Arlen Tuttle, then age 36, who was killed in action Nov. 5, 1965.

A high school friend was also killed there, another died later of cancer from exposure to Agent Orange. Still others, I now realize, suffered the invisible wounds of Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome.

Not long ago at a neighborhood party, a successful businessman was coaxed by a friend into describing how he once “woke up” to find himself taking cover beneath his car, convinced he was under attack back in Vietnam .

No one laughed at his story

So whether you served during a past war or are serving in a current conflict or at home in what passes these days for peace time, THANK YOU.