I don't recall where I got this piece - I'm sure I received it in an email years ago, and ever since, I always dust it off and sent it out in email to most of my address book. This is the first Veterans' Day since I began my little blog, so I thought I would post it here. I don't know who wrote it, and it is becoming dated, only describing veterans through Desert Shield/Desert Storm, but that shouldn't matter. I would be willing to take suggestions for additions to this list.
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 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 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 or were awarded.
Two little words that mean a lot "Thank You".
Remember November 11th is Veteran's 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
And don't forget, some of our most recent vets could use your help through Valour-IT. Go click on the "Make a Donation" button and give as much as you are able.
And from me to any vet who reads my post, THANK YOU!
2 comments:
I've just come a-visiting via Blackfive, and am enjoying your blog.
Thank you so much for posting this. As an army brat (both parents), I take the military seriously, and it's always a pleasure to see that others do too.
With respect to your piece, the bit about putting ambitions to the side really struck a chord with me.
My dad effectively ran away to the army to get away from his mother (she really was a horrid woman), met my mother, got married and had a family.
He retired after 21 years as a Warrant Officer, and continued on, as you tend to do.
After my mum died in 2001, I was talking with him, and said something along the lines of, "You'll be able to do whatever you want now, go do anything at all."
This was after a couple of years nursing mum through cancer.
His reply was that he could never be what he always wanted, as his fingers were no longer as nimble and his eyesight was also not what it was.
So I asked what he had wanted to be.
He had always wanted to be a naturalist.
Instead, he spent 21 years as a radio tech in the army, did a tour in Vietnam, and a year on transfer to the USA.
He provided for a wife and three children, grumbling about politics and the neighbours, but never about what he could have been.
Sometimes he marches in the Anzac Day Parade, sometimes he doesn't.
Whether he does or not is irrelevant.
He's still my dad, and still a veteran and a hero.
Again, thank you for posting this, and I hope you don't mind if I lift it wholesale for my blog.
Except for the stuff in italics, I didn't write this. The "what is a vet?" part is from an unknown author, and then the well-known bit from Father O'Brien. If you want to share it, just cite it appropriately.
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