| WHAT IS A VET?
Some veterans bear visible signs of their service: a
missing limb, a jagged scar, a certain look in the eye.
Others may carry the evidence inside
them: a pin holding a bone together, a piece of shrapnel in the
leg - or perhaps another sort of inner steel: the soul's ally forged
in the refinery of adversity. Except in parades, however, the men
and women who have kept America safe wear no badge or emblem.
You can't tell a vet just by looking.
What is a vet?
He is the cop on the beat who spent six months in Saudi Arabia sweating
two gallons a day making sure the armored personnel carriers didn't
run out of fuel. He is the barroom loudmouth, dumber than five wooden
planks, whose overgrown frat-boy behavior is outweighed a
hundred times in the cosmic scales by four hours of exquisite bravery
near the 38th parallel.
She - or he - is the nurse who fought
against futility and went to sleep sobbing every night for two solid
years in Da Nang.
He is the POW who went away one person
and came back another - or didn't come back AT ALL.
He is the TRADOC drill instructor who has never seen combat - but
has saved countless lives by turning slouchy, no-account rednecks
and gang members into soldiers, and teaching them to
watch each other's backs.
He is the parade - riding Legionnaire
who pins on his ribbons and medals with a prosthetic hand.
He is the career logistician who watches
the ribbons and medals pass him by.
He is the three anonymous heroes in The
Tomb Of The Unknowns, whose presence at the Arlington National Cemetery
must forever preserve the memory of all the anonymous heroes whose
valor dies unrecognized with them on the battlefield or in the ocean's
sunless deep.
He is the old guy bagging groceries at
the supermarket - palsied now and aggravatingly slow who helped
liberate a Nazi death camp and who wishes all day long that
his wife were still alive to hold him when the nightmares come.
He is an ordinary and yet an extraordinary
human being - a person who offered some of his life's most vital
years in the service of his country, and who sacrificed his ambitions
so others would not have to sacrifice theirs.
He is a soldier, sailor, airman, or Marine
and a savior and a sword against the darkness, and he is nothing
more than the finest, greatest testimony on behalf of the finest,
greatest nation ever known.
So remember, each time you see someone
who has served our country, just lean over and say Thank You. That's
all most people need, and in most cases it will mean more than any
medals they could have been awarded or were awarded.
Two little words that mean a lot, "THANK
YOU".
Remember November 11th is
Veterans Day "It is the sailor, not the reporter,
Who has given us freedom of the press. It is the soldier, not the
poet, Who has given us freedom of speech. It is the Marine, not
the campus organizer, Who has given us the freedom to demonstrate.
It is the airman, Who salutes the flag, Who serves beneath the flag,
And whose coffin is draped by the flag, Who allows the protestor
to burn the flag."
Father Denis Edward O'Brien
USMC
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