What Is A Veteran?
by Father Denis Edward O'Brien, USMC
by Father Denis Edward O'Brien, USMC
(Thanks, Papa)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 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 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.
(Thanks, Dad)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.
(Thanks, Son)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."
