LadyHawke
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"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 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, 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."
Warner Anderson MD
Chief, Emergency Medicine
Gallup Indian Medical Center
U.S. Public Health Service
and LTC, MC
Group Surgeon
19 Special Forces Group Airborne
Wednesday, November 11th is Veterans' Day