What is a vet?
by
Father Denis Edward O'Brien, USMC
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 spend 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.
He/She 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 that
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 Legionnair 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".
"It is the soldier, not the reporter, who
has given us freedom of the press. It is the soldier, not the
poet, who has given us the freedom of speech. It is the soldier,
not the campus organizer, who has given us the freedom to demonstrate.
It is the soldier, 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."
