"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"
Author Unknown
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