Veterans Day

[K80Geoff]

a friend sent me this E mail, thought I would pass it along to you folks, I apologize if it has already been posted>

"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 protester to burn the flag."
>
> Father Dennis Edward O'Brien, USMC
________________________________

And for all of you Vietnam Vets:

If you are able,
Save for them a place
Inside of you
And save one backward glance
When you are leaving
For the places they can
No longer go.

Be not ashamed to say
You loved them,
Though you may
Or may not have always.

Take what they have left
And what they have taught you
With their dying
And keep it with your own.

And in that time
When men decide and feel safe
To call the war insane,
Take one moment to embrace
Those gentle heroes
You left behind.


Major Michael Davis O’Donnell
1-1-70
Dak To, Viet Nam



[This message has been edited by K80Geoff (edited November 11, 2000).]

[CyberVet65]

Thanks for posting that. Sometimes folks forget that the price of freedom comes dear.
Chet Botkins
3/18th Arty 1st.Cav.
RVN 10/65-5/67

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