The Annual Tradition: A Love Letter To Those Who Kill

Every Memorial Day, I link to my Memorial Day essay: A Love Letter To Those Who Kill.
Two years ago, someone expressed concern about the gendered language of this essay, of the repeated usage of “our boys” when there are, in fact, a lot of women in the military risking their lives as well. She felt that using the term “our boys,” though traditional, renders women invisible. She asked me to revise the essay to change this.
Unfortunately, a combination of “this is a snapshot what I said then, no matter how dumb it may sound to me now” and “I’ve watched George Lucas edit his shit into horror” and “I’m not sure in editing I wouldn’t change the meaning/introduce other errors which would then need to be edited” makes me have a rule that I don’t edit an essay at all once it’s been up for a day or two. (Otherwise, I would doubtlessly edit some of my more controversial essays into such well-reasoned processes that people would wonder what the fuss was about. And the job of this blog is not to always make me look good or enlightened.)
But she raises a good point. This year, I’ll ask you to raise an extra-special toast to the women in our services, and will go out of my way to reference the women (and the gendered flaw in the essay) whenever I link to it in the future.
In any case, flaws and all, here it is.