A Tribute to Our Veterans and Our Servicemen and Women

DADDY, 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 loud mouth, 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 any 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 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~

My thanks to Kari for the poem and the pictures. Please visit her joke site.

Graphics by:
Dana Lea's Web Graphics