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  hill- billy rednecks and
no -account  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 also was my father, your father, grandfather, husband,  brother,
uncle, cousin, and yes , all  the  females who bravely served and are
serving their country, for OUR   freedom .
    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 or is serving
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

 And don't forget  to  Fly The FLAG on Nov. 11th,  with pride:

Alice
alicep@ma.ultranet.com