WHAT IS A VET?
Some veterans bear visible signs of their service: a missing limb, a jagged, 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, by far, 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 P.O.W. who went away one person and came back another- or didn't come
back AT ALL. He is the drill instructor
who has never seen combat - but has saved countless lives by turning slouchy,
no-account rednecks, gang
members, and mama's boys, into soldiers, and teaching them to watch each
others' backs. He is the parade - riding
Legionnaire who pins on his ribbons and medals with a prosthetic hand. He is
the career statistician who watches
the ribbons and medals pass him by. They are 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.
What
is a vet?
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.
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 of them need and, in most cases, it will mean more than any medals received. Two little words that mean a lot!
"THANK
YOU, THANK YOU ALL SO MUCH, FOR YOUR SERVICE & SACRIFICES!!!
Tribute by Dave Probert
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