Ally

Maybe it was naive for Evelyn Rohrbacher to expect a military discount for her Marine grandson's Thanksgiving flight home.

Last week almost nobody showed up at Boston's Veteran's Day parade.

And in Cambridge, some petty, nasty complainer begrudged the troops toiletries Boy Scouts had collected for them at polling places. Worse, Cambridge officials caved to the petty and nasty.

Nearly every day there's another story detailing how even the government fails to "support the troops," as we say today, from ill- equipped soldiers on the ground to inadequate health care, particularly mental health care, back home.

But Evelyn Rohrbacher, 72, knew about the airline discounts. She comes from a military family. Her husband Curtis, 77, served with the Navy in Korea. Her son-in-law Derek served with the Marines in Vietnam. The two grandsons she's helped raise since their mother died are both Marines: Harold's son, Derek Surette, 24, is in Iraq now. Adam Hinckley, 19, is at Camp Lejeune, S.C., in the Marine reserves.

"I begged him to go to college," Rohrbacher says. But Adam had different dreams.

Still, when he found out 10 days ago about a Thanksgiving leave, he couldn't wait to get home for his nana's candied sweet potatoes.

So Nana, not an online type of traveler, got on the phone to airlines serving T.F. Greene Airport near her North Easton home. She spent hours calling Continental, Delta, US Airways. The prices were $800, $1,100, $1,200 round trip.

"These didn't sound like discounts to me," she said. When she asked, she either heard there were no discounts anymore, or that the military seats were taken, or that the quoted figure was already discounted.

After two days, she finally found a $630 US Airways flight not into Greene, which would've cost hundreds more, but Logan International Airport. She booked it. The Rohrbachers, financially pressed and living on Social Security, could only put a couple hundred dollars toward the fare. Adam Hinckley, the 19-year-old Marine reservist, will pay the rest.

"You know I'm from World War II," she said, "when everybody helped out. It's different now, and people don't realize what's going on. My grandson Derek? He just asked me to send him insulated socks to Iraq because his feet are freezing at night. When he was (at Camp Lejeune), he'd drive home, 14 hours each way, because he couldn't afford to fly. Now Adam doesn't have a car."

So he'll pay for a flight he can't afford.

Early in the Iraq war, many airlines offered military discounts. A US Airways spokesman said Friday that they, like Delta, no longer do. Other airlines, such as United, American and Continental, list military discounts on their Web sites, but it's unclear, and could not be confirmed, what exactly that means.

While all this surprised Evelyn Rohrbacher, it did not surprise Tom Lyons, a Vietnam vet who's worked on veterans issues for years. He was at last Sunday's sparsely attended parade. He heard all about the Cambridge humiliation. He can debunk other myths, like great military deals for college. Soldiers typically get tuition breaks, but it's the skyrocketing fees they can't afford.

"It'd be a great moral booster for them to know there's something special for them around the holidays," he said. "It's tough when you're 19 and away from home for the first time, but airline tickets are prohibitive."

Then he repeated the sad cliche of the Iraq war: "We're at war, but only if you've got someone in the military. If you're not touched by it, it's not your every day."

And too few of us - my words, not his - care to change that.

(Military.com)