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.
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 did not 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 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.
His is the career logistician who stands in the crowd, watching 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 died 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 the ordinary
and yet extraordinary human being - a person who offered som 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, a 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 mean a lot: "Thank-you."
Remember November 11 is Veterans Day. It is the sailor, not the
reporter who has given us freedom of the press. It is the soldier,
not the poet, what 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 protester
to burn the flag.
By Denis O'Brien, a priest in the U.S. Marine Corps