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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 protestor to burn the flag."
Father Denis Edward O'Brien
USMC
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