There is a wonderful, slightly schmaltzy video making the Internet rounds. It is silent. Two old guys make up the cast. It is called Reveille and it is all about a place that some can claim and some can’t.

My one slim connection to it is a green tunic with lance corporal stripes on the sleeves that has the smell of my basement in Fall River forever embedded in it.

I weighed in at a lean 165 when I wore that tunic. Now, any attempt to pull it on and button it up is a groaning acknowledgment of a lot of years and a lot of pounds.

What makes Reveille so appealing is that it takes those very signs of age — the larger girth, the slower step — and makes them part of the enduring, sustaining dignity of military service.

The two men in the video appear to be World War II veterans. They carry their memories into the space between their front doors.

The video is shot in a retirement complex. It opens with a Navy man walking past framed photos of his past service hanging on the wall of his apartment and heading out for his morning ritual — raising the flag on the pole outside his door and pausing briefly with hand over heart.

Then, an Army man moves in across the courtyard. He not only moves in, he puts a large Army poster in his window.

The Navy man puts a “Go Navy” poster in his window. And thus begins a competition without words in which each veteran makes a daily bid to go one up on the other. Each pins more and more medals on his civilian duds, on bathrobe and T-shirt. There are Purple Hearts among them.

Finally, they pull on those old uniforms, the ones tailored to a much earlier time and with buttons that will never be buttoned again. They salute the flag together. They never speak, but they look at each other and seem to acknowledge shared losses and a quiet pride. There is an unspoken understanding of where they’ve been and what they’ve seen. The rivalry is part of the tradition.

Reveille ends with one of the veterans not showing up for the quiet morning meeting at the flag. The other veteran finds him on the obituary page of the morning paper. He raises the flag again, then lowers it to half- staff.

I’ve seen some long war movies, heavy on the explosions, that have said far less about the experience.

Yesterday was, of course, the day of old uniforms, the annual veterans’ button challenge. It was a day for some to polish and press and maybe suck in some of that civilian excess before going out to remind us of the continuing price of living as we do.

I did try that green tunic again. I could follow an all-broccoli diet and do sit-ups until next spring and not come close to bringing the two sides together.

Veterans Day has yet to become one of those long weekend holidays, forever on a Monday. It is always Nov. 11, one day after the Marine Corps’ birthday (Happy 233). And it is always a day that seems not to require a lot of talking. There are always speeches because people want to go on record as supporting our veterans.

But the best part of the day is the parade down the main drag and the chance to see the generations of veterans moving at whatever pace the years allow. Some of their wars are decades past. Some are still in the headlines, or should be.

We need only stand on the sidewalk and watch something that has changed very little move past.

And if you said “Welcome Home” to some of the younger veterans yesterday, that was a very good thing to do.

bkerr@projo.com