by Lourie Salley

I am a retired Lt.Col., USMCR. I appreciate the thought of "Veterans Day", but it galls me that Veterans Day seems to exclude a huge number of veterans from my State. More South Carolinians died under the "Starry Cross of St. Andrew" (the Confederate Battle Flag), than have died under the "Star Spangled Banner" in all of this nation's other wars combined. I spent Veterans Day in Baltimore this year. It is ironic that the grandson of Francis Scott Key, who wrote the "Star Spangled Banner", spent 4 years as a political prisoner at Ft. McHenry, the same location that his grandfather wrote the anthem of the United States.

It is somehow fitting that great poem ends with a question, "Oh, say does that star spangled banner yet wave, over the land of the free, and the home of the brave?" The question is not, does it still wave, but are we still free, and are we still brave?"