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.

What is a vet?

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.

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.

The nurse who fought against futility and went to sleep sobbing
every night for two solid years in Da Nang.

The POW who went away one person and came back another--
or didn't come back at all.

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.

The parade-riding Legionnaire who pins on his ribbons and
medals with a prosthetic hand.

The career quartermaster who watches the ribbons and medals
pass him by.

The three anonymous heroes in The Tomb Of The Unknowns,
whose presence at Arlington National Cemetary 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.

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.

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.

A soldier, a sailor and a savior and a sword against the darkness,
and he is nothing more that 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 im 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

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