.
It's a good thing to do. I'm in.
I'm reading a very good book about the war in Afghanistan--called War, appropriately enough, by a journalist who was embedded there for a year, Sebastian Junger (also wrote The Perfect Storm). Happens I just read a bit about some of the guys going home on leave. One soldier was walking through an airport in Texas to get to a flight and some businessman got up and gave him his boarding pass--just switched with him. The soldier got to ride up in First Class and drink champagne. Cool thing to do.
It also mentioned the care packages--and who doesn't like to open packages? They have long periods of mind-numbing boredom between those other periods of much worse. You may not think it would mean much, doing something like this, but it does. Things like this make a real impression.
The other way, too. I was in Yellowstone Park a few years ago and got talking to a pair of Good Ol' Boys from Alabama riding tricked-out Gold Wing trikes. We were talking about where we'd been, what we'd seen. I said they should see Yosemite. One of them about spit on the ground and said he swore he'd never set his foot in California again in his life, based on the b.s. reception he'd had from the locals in S.F. airport coming back from Vietnam. I didn't even live in California then, but it made me feel pretty bad about my adopted state. Point is, I'd rather leave a good feeling with guys we owe so much to than a bad one.
.
.
