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?
She - or 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.
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 -or she- is the Quantico drill instructor who has never
seen combat but has saved countless lives by turning slouchy,
no-account people into Marines, and taught them to watch each
other's backs.
He -or she- is the parade - riding Legionnaire who pins on his
ribbons and medals with a prosthetic hand.
He -or she- 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 -or she-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 -or she- 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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God, Bless the USA
by Lee Greenwood
