| On Veterans Day, we remember the warriors whose courage and sacrifices preserved our freedoms and our way of life. Yet the intent of this federal holiday is to celebrate and honor all who have served or are serving in the military, both the living and the dead, whether equipped with a rifle or a spatula.
“Tooth-to-tail” is an informal term expressing the ratio of combat troops to noncombat troops in the military. When writing of World War II, for example, historians cite different tooth-to-tail statistics, with the generally accepted figure of 4.3 men and women serving off the battlefield for every soldier on it. Without the quartermasters, planners, suppliers of food and ammunition, medical personnel, and more—the troops with the guns and tanks would have struggled to win any battle at all.
We must also bear in mind that throughout the history of the American military, support troops have accepted danger and hardship when duty called. When rapidly advancing American forces in France began outrunning their supply lines in the summer of 1944, the Army formed the Red Ball Express. Here, noncombatants, the majority of them African American, loaded and drove convoys of trucks, and for 82 days delivered an average of 12,000 tons of supplies a day to troops in the field. That effort kept the Army on the attack against the Germans and contributed greatly to the Allied victory.
Washington’s Vietnam Veterans Memorial includes a sculpture to the 11,000 women who served in that country during the war. 90 percent of them were military nurses who volunteered for that duty, which is why the sculpture depicts three nurses tending to a wounded soldier. During these war years, more than 250,000 other women helped maintain the strength and capabilities of our armed forces by volunteering for service in the military.
And often overlooked in our Veterans Day appreciation are those on the very end of the “tooth-to-tail” ratio, the mothers, fathers, husbands, wives, and children left behind when their loved ones are deployed overseas.
This Veterans Day, let’s pause from our busy schedules and salute by means of heartfelt appreciation all our veterans, living and dead, those on the battlefield and those who have cared for them as brothers, and may we remember as well those who, in the absence of these loved ones, maintained homes and families worthy of their return.
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