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 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 Legionnaire riding in a parade 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 any of 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 was 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."
Remember November 11th is Veterans Day.
"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 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."
Father Denis Edward O'Brien
USMC
