DADDY, 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 DaNang. 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 any of 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 protester to burn the flag."
Father Denis Edward O'Brien, USMC
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