A giant Veterans Day parade passes by my building in downtown Houston. Last year, I caught it as my friend and I were walking back from one of our regular lunch haunts. We stood on the sidewalk and watched row after row of high school kids in ROTC uniforms march by, shouting cadences in teenage tough voices. My friend and I both started to cry, thinking about the innocents going off to war.

This year the parade passed by again, and I pulled my friend down the elevator with me to watch it. Both of us were leery; neither of us wanted to cry again. And for some reason, we didn’t. Maybe because we had both steeled ourselves – last year, the parade took us by surprise. This year we were prepared for what we would see.

But maybe it’s more than that. Last year I thought, those kids don’t know what they’re in for. But as I read about the soldiers who died last week at Fort Hood, especially the youngest ones, I have reconsidered. Yes, those kids do know what they’re in for, and they’re going to volunteer anyway.

At the memorial service at Fort Hood yesterday, President Obama said of our armed forces, “We need not look to the past for greatness, because it is before our very eyes.”

I saw it in those children today, before my very eyes.