Don't confuse Veteran's Day with Memorial Day. Veteran's Day is for the survivors. The dead who are remembered on Memorial Day didn't live long enough to become a Veteran.
War is hell, as Sherman said it is. Nobody comes back the same person. No war ever ends for those who fight in it. The war is like a ghost who follows them to the grave.... and the ghost is right!
The pardox of it is that war is a province of death, it forces men to be more intensly alive than they ever were before, or ever will be again.
When you look at a veteran, you should remember that however ordinary he looks or sounds, he is different than you are. He knows things that civilians don't know, because they are not asked to die or kill, or to endure terror and horror...day after day.
