The end of World War One was announced ahead of time. The guns, it was agreed, would fall silent on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month—11-11-11. Despite the advance warning that hostilities would end at 11 a.m., some eager commanders launched final minute attacks. The last American killed in the war fell with one minute to go. He was just a footnote among almost 20 million dead.

Thus we remember veterans on November 11.

My mom’s father spent the rest of his life diving out of bed at night, seeking cover from artillery shells that shrieked in almost every time he slept. But he continued on as a respected, hard working, church-going coal miner. My dad’s father thoroughly enjoyed his time as an aircraft mechanic. And service gave him enough cash to buy a farm. So instead of heading back to El Paso, where he ran a saloon, he journeyed from France to the Bootheel of Missouri, leaving all his old possessions, debts and acquaintances behind.

He continued on as the only pillar of semi-respectability in a swirl of ne’er-do-wells.

During another conflict, Sonny and Cher recorded “The Beat Goes On,” including the line “men still keep on marching off to war.”

And so my uncle Charles (or Highlee), jumped into Holland with the 504th PIR of the 82nd Airborne in 1944, crossed the Waal River in a day during which his unit took 50 percent casualties and fought SS Panzer divisions in Belgium’s Ardennes forest with his rifle.

My uncle Harold was a U.S. Marine legation guard stationed in Beijing (then Peking) in 1941. When Japan attacked Pearl Harbor he and the other “North China Marines,” already based in Japanese-held territory, were taken prisoner. He did not fire a shot during the war. Rather, he endured starvation, severe illness, filth and torture in enemy POW camps. At the time he was rescued in Niigata, Japan, after the surrender, he weighed 112 pounds.

I might also mention my uncle Fred—but he really wouldn’t care about the gesture. He didn’t particularly relish service, even though he fought well (relatively speaking) through the Battle of the Bulge after his unit disintegrated in the initial German attack.

According to Fred, he was once chastised by an officer for failing to warn the line when an enemy patrol approached. Why, asked the lieutenant, didn’t you fire?

“I didn’t want to get shot,” Fred replied.

He was honest to a fault. Returning to basic training under guard following an AWOL stint, he explained to the MPs that he felt it was simply too hot to train. He certainly planned to come back when the thermometer eased off.

Then there was uncle Bob, who spent much of World War Two at an airfield in Florida, where the weather was generally pleasant.

Fortunately they all survived a war that killed some 55 million around the world.

As these snapshots from two generations in my family suggest, the experience of America’s veterans—as well as their level of maturity or interest in global affairs—varies dramatically. Some remained stateside, others were thrust into combat. There were those who did their duty, the ones who performed heroic deeds, the men and women who naturally succumbed to great fear or pressure and random guys like Fred who really didn’t understand why they ended up with a rifle in their hands but would use it if and when it suited them. A few became prisoners of war and many returned with wounds...or did not return at all.

America’s veterans share a few things in common, though—and not just an appreciation of SOS or MREs. Their lives and were interrupted and forever shaped by war.

Most of us understand the thanks we owe these men and women for their service. But I always think of an old Bill Mauldin “Willie and Joe” cartoon—one in which a soldier looks at his weapon and muses “I’ve given you the best years of my life.”

And so the day honors not only their time in uniform, defending this nation or the peoples of distant lands, but also the decades that followed. Over the years I’ve spoken to veterans who tucked away their service and returned to daily life, who never again touched another weapon, who suffered through nightmares, who celebrated their feats and who refused to speak about them. Yet they were, for the most part, quietly proud.

On Veterans Day we should at the very least recognize that those born into an era that exploded into war answered as best they could. And in doing so, they gave up something of themselves for me, you and others they had never met.