YouTube Celebrates Veterans Day With List Of Most-Viewed Homecoming Videos

YouTube is celebrating Veterans Day tomorrow with a compilation of heartwarming clips of service members returning home from duty. Additionally, YouTube has created a video honoring veterans for their service — which also seeks to help citizens who haven’t served understand the sacrifices that military personnel make on our behalf, the video giant says.

“From heartwarming homecoming videos to personal vlogs about their service experiences, veterans turn to YouTube to help share their stories and form community,” chief marketing officer Danielle Tiedt wrote in a blog post, which also calls out notable veteran creators like beauty and fashion vlogger Missy Lynn (530,000 subscribers) and fitness star Nick Bare (160,000 subscribers).

Surprise reunions and homecoming videos are a particularly popular genre on YouTube, writes Tiedt, and these types of videos see a resurgence around Veterans Day. The most-viewed such video on all of YouTube features a German Shepherd fetching a ball — only to bring it back to his long-gone dad, just back from deployment (21 million views

). In second place is a scuba-diving soldier who surprises his family in the ocean (19 million views), followed by a deaf rescue pitbull welcoming home his father after a drill weekend (15 million views).

You can check out YouTube’s list of the 20 most popular homecoming videos right here — which count a combined 180 million views to date — as well as its Thank You For Everything Veterans Day video below: