Facebook, CNN come together to honor vets

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Veterans Day honors men and women who have served or are serving in the military

CNN and Facebook partnered to salute veterans in a new way

Know a vet? Honor your service member on iReport

CNN  — 

Veterans Day is dedicated to honoring our military servicemen and servicewomen, many of whom continue to risk their lives for the lives of millions. The efforts of these heroes and the sacrifices they make deserve our respect and gratitude.

This year for Veterans Day, CNN iReport partnered with Facebook to salute veterans in a new way. Facebook users uploaded pictures of veterans they wanted to recognize for their service and tagged “CNN iReport” in the photo for it to appear on iReport’s Facebook page. We invited some of the best submitters to upload their photos to iReport in our Honor a veteran assignment. Those submissions that originated on Facebook received a “Submitted via Facebook” bug in the producer’s note of the iReport.

We received tributes honoring veterans across all branches of the U.S. military, and even one from the Canadian Navy.

Lee Gunderson praised Dr. Donald MacMahon, C.D., one of the most famous Canadians to serve during World War II. MacMahon served with distinction in the Canadian Navy where “he accepted the surrender of the first German submarine captured in Canadian waters,” Gunderson wrote in his iReport.

“He later went on to become one of the great leaders of our Armed Forces and Navy Veterans societies in Canada.”

Several of the submissions included tributes to generations of family members who served or are currently serving in the military. Rachel Goodspeed posted a tribute to all of her family members who have served the U.S., including her grandfather, father, husband, brother and herself. Her father, who spent 30 years in the Air Force, was a big influence in her decision to join the military.

“We have a tradition of having family members in the service,” she said. “It seemed natural for me to want to continue that.”

Goodspeed says that entering the military is a huge sacrifice, recalling that during her childhood her father was gone on deployments for extended periods of time. “They’re fighting for a cause that’s bigger than themselves,” she said.

If you know someone who has served in the Armed Forces and would like to honor their service, you can upload a tribute to them in our Salute to Troops assignment. If you would like to honor a fallen service member, you can upload a tribute to them in our Home and Away: Remembering the fallen assignment.

CNN’s Carly Costello contributed to this story.