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Re: Veteran's Day

To: "Richard D Arnold" <richard.arnold@juno.com>, <mgs@Autox.Team.Net>, <spridgets@Autox.Team.Net>
Subject: Re: Veteran's Day
From: "Carl Elliott" <grunt2@adelphia.net>
Date: Tue, 10 Nov 1998 20:42:02 -0500
Reply-to: "Carl Elliott" <grunt2@adelphia.net>
Sender: owner-spridgets@Autox.Team.Net
Hoo Rah !!  Carl E.
-----Original Message-----
From: Richard D Arnold <richard.arnold@juno.com>
To: mgs@autox.team.net <mgs@autox.team.net>; spridgets@autox.team.net
<spridgets@autox.team.net>
Date: Tuesday, November 10, 1998 7:18 AM
Subject: Veteran's Day


>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?
>
>A vet 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.
>
>A vet 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.
>
>A vet is the nurse who fought against futility and went to sleep crying
>every night for two solid years in Da Nang.
>
>A vet is the POW who went away one person and came back another -  or
>didn't come back at all.
>
>A vet 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.
>
>A vet is the parade-riding Legionnaire who pins on his ribbons and medals
>with a prosthetic hand.
>
>A vet is the career quartermaster who watches the ribbons and medals pass
>him by.
>
>A vet 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 anonymous heroes whose valor dies unrecognized with them on
>the battlefield or in the ocean's sunless deep.
>
>A vet 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.
>
>A vet 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.
>
>A vet is a soldier and a savior and a sword against the darkness, 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."
>
>          "It's the soldier, not the reporter,
>           Who gave us our freedom of the press.
>           It's the soldier, not the poet,
>           Who gave us our freedom of speech.
>           It's the soldier, not the campus organizer,
>           Who gave us our freedom to demonstrate.
>
>           It's the soldier,
>           Who salutes the flag,
>           Who serves others with respect for the flag,
>           And whose coffin is draped by the flag,
>           Who allows the protestor to burn the flag."
>
>Attributed to:  Father Denis Edward O'Brien, USMC


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