I just wanted to share this:
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 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 protester to burn the flag."
-Father Denis Edward O’Brien, USMC
To all Vets out there, past, present and future, I echo the sentiments I expressed last year in my Memorial Day thread, inadequate as they may be:
Thank You