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".
Remember November 11th is Veterans Day
"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 protestor to burn the flag."
Father Denis Edward O'Brien, USMC
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