WHAT DOES A VET LOOK LIKE ?

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!

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 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 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 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 "

"Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and success of liberty."
(Inaugural Address - John F. Kennedy - January 20, 1961)

"Our dead brothers still live for us
and bid us think of life, not death
~ of life to which in their youth
they lent the passion and glory
of Spring. As I listen, the great
chorus of life and joy begins
again... amid the awful orchestra
of seen and unseen powers,
and destinies of good and evil,
their trumptets sound once more
a note of daring, hope, and will."
~ Oliver Wendell Homes ~

" The willingness with which
our young people are likely
to serve in any war,
no matter how justified,
shall be directly proportional
as to how they preceive
the veterans of earlier wars were
Treated and Appreciated
by their nation. "
~ George Washington ~
~ U.S. PRESIDENT ~

"Americia The Beautiful"

See U.S. Declaration of Independence at
http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Woods/3682/vets.html

Life is changed,not taken away.
To live in hearts we leave behind is not to die.

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