It’s Memorial Day in the U.S.. A time when many reflect on the sacrifices made by soldiers past and present. Recently, a nice young American man said to me “I didn’t know Canada had an army!” as we were discussing Canada’s role in Afghanistan. We had a laugh about it but it brought special poignancy to something General Romeo Dallaire’s father told him when he went off to begin his military career at eighteen: “I should never expect to be thanked; a soldier, if he was going to be content, had to understand that no civilian, no government, sometimes not even the army itself, would recognize the true nature of the sacrifices he made.”

Maybe that’s one of the things that makes service men and women so special: that they somehow manage to find fulfillment in what must surely be the most thankless job on Earth.