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".