WHAT IS A VETERAN?
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,
the 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."
author-
Father Denis Edward O'Brien
USMC
