[ST] Veterans Day

["Jack Hays" <rude@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

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 Iraq 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 drill instructor that has never seen combat--but has saved
countless lives by turning slouchy, no-account rednecks, city boys/girls,
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 die 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.

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."

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 lawyer,
who has given us the right to a fair trial.

It is the soldier,
not the politician,
who has given us the right to vote.

It is the soldier,
not the campus organizer,
who has given us the freedom to demonstrate.

Let's remember them on Veteran's Day, November 11th.

===============================

Mikey's Thot for the Day: See above.





Jack "Rude Dog" Hays
972-952-5065
"I'll see you on the Dark Side of the Moon"



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