What Is a Vet?

Some veterans bear visible signs of their service: a missing limb, a
jagged scar, a certain look in the eyes.  Others may carry the
evidence inside them: a pin holding a bone together, a piece of
shrapnel -- or perhaps another sort of inner steel: the soul's alloy
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?

The Vet 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.

The Vet may be 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 in Korea.

The Vet is the nurse who fought against futility and went to sleep
sobbing every night in Da Nang.

The Vet is the former POW who went away one person and came back
another - or didn't come back AT ALL.

The Vet is the Quantico drill instructor who maybe never experienced
combat -- but saved countless lives by turning slouchy, no-account
rednecks and gang members into Marines by teaching them to watch and
protect each other's backs.

The Vet is the wheel chair-riding Legionnaire who pins on his
ribbons and medals with a prosthetic hand.

The Vet is the career quartermaster who watched the ribbons and
medals pass him by but made certain every needed bullet found it way
to the front line.

The Vet is one 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
uncommon valor lies unrecognized with them on the battlefield or in
the ocean's sunless deep.

The Vet 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.

The Vet 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.
 

 
"It is the soldier, not the reporter, who gave us Freedom of the
Press. It is the soldier, not the poet, who gave 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. It is the soldier whose bravery and sacrifice made it possible
for the protester to burn the flag."

Our Sailor & Our FamilyHome2345Our eMail

Our Other Veterans Don Marv Rosie DavidOther

Our Home RootsSoilSeedsHarvestProjected Plot

Other pages of Interest:A Soldiers' ChristmasWhat IS a Vet?Anchors Aweigh