From: Bones (mrbones@ixks.com)
Date: Wed Sep 15 2004 - 20:55:32 PDT
Wayne thanks for the name correction and the link to the rest, had lost it
on a HDD crash, was working from memory. Not always the best idea as age
advances, I find :-)
I have seen several versions of this over the years, and am unsure as to
which is the original.
When I used it on a site that I used to host about ten years back, I do
recall that I cut and pasted it from NARA.gov (National Archives), and I dug
out the html page to do the same here.. :
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 TRADOC drill instructor who has never seen combat - but has saved
countless lives by turning slouchy, no-account rednecks and gang members
into soldiers, 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 logistician 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, sailor, airman, or Marine 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:
"It is the sailor, 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 Marine, not the campus organizer, Who has given us the freedom to
demonstrate.
It is the airman, Who salutes the flag, Who serves beneath the flag, And
whose coffin is draped by the flag, Who allows the protestor to burn the
flag."
Father Denis Edward O'Brien USMC
Best regards,
T. Bones Morris
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