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 scharpnel 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 bar room loud mouth, dumber than five wooden planks,
Whose over grown 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
teaching Marines to watch each other's back.
He is the parade riding Legionaire
Who pins on his ribbons and medals
With a prosthetic hand.
He is the three anonymous heroes
In the tomb of the unknown,
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 aggravatinigly 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 the ordinary and yet extraordinary human being...
A person who offered some of his life'smost 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 and 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 orwere awarded.
The little words that mean alot,
"Thank You"
Father Deniss Edward O'Brien USMC
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