[GreenKeys] Off subject but IMPORTANT

[Robert McConnell]

At 11/6/02 09:47 PM -0600, Don Robert House wrote:
>This has been around before, if I recall correctly.  However, I found it 
>to be important to read again - - -

I believe this one has also been posted on this list. But with Veteran's 
Day coming up on Monday, it seems appropriate to post it again.

Happy Veteran's day to all!

Bob McConnell
N2SPP

--------------------------------------------------
  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, 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".

  Remember November 11th is Veterans Day

  "It is the soldier, not the reporter,
  Who has given us freedom of the press.
  It is the soldier, not the poet,
  Who has given 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,
  Who allows the protestor to burn the flag."

  Father Denis Edward O'Brien, USMC