On Tue, 9 Nov 1999 15:29:12 -0700 , Grossnicklaus Jeff SMSgt 27OSS/OSO
wrote:
>
> 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
>
Thank you SARGE, for myself and thoes who can't.
Robert B. Sexson, MSGT, USAF [ret]
Get FREE voicemail, fax and email at http://voicemail.excite.com
Talk online at http://voicechat.excite.com
|