| 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 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".
"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."
Anthony Barton Hinkle
Published by Richmond Times-Dispatch Nov 11, 2005
This editorial first appeared in 1995 |
The Force Recon Association originally posted this article, attributing the author to Father Dennis Edward O'Brien, USMC. This was in error.
The FRA would like to thank Karen Bass of CH2MHill-WG Idaho for bringing the error to the attention of the FRA webmaster and the webmaster of the The International War Veterans Poetry Archives (IWVPA) for researching the claim sent in by the actual author's spouse and posting the properly attributed article. The link to the IWPVA above will take you to the article. |
