Something to think about as we approach Veteran's Day
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 red necks 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 protester to burn the flag."
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