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.
JEFFREY L. GROSSNICKLAUS, SMSGT, USAF
Superintendent, Operations Support Squadron
Cannon AFB, New Mexico
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