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"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 Quantico drill instructor who has never
seen combat -- but has saved countless lives by
turning
slouchy, no-account rednecks and gang members into Marines, 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 quartermaster 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 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."
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"It is the soldier, 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 soldier, not the campus organizer, Who
has given us the freedom to demonstrate.
It is the soldier, who salutes the flag, who serves
beneath the flag, and whose coffin is draped by
the
flag, who allows the protester to burn the flag."
Father
Dennis Edward O'Brien, USMC
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"We are not put on this earth for ourselves, but are placed here for each other. If you are always there
for others, then in time of need, someone will be there for you.
-- Jeff Warner
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