Re: Gen: What Is A Veteran?
From: Anna Meenan, MD (annam@uic.edu)
Fri Nov 11 08:20:31 2005
The guy who built roads and airstrips in the jungles in the South
Pacific. My Dad.
Happy Veteran's Day everyone.
--
Anna Meenan, MD
At Fri, 11 Nov 2005, art fougner, md wrote:
>
>What Is A Veteran?
>by Marine Corp chaplain,
>Father Denis Edward O'Brian
>
>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?
>
>A vet 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.
>
>A vet 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.
>
>A vet is the nurse who fought against futility and went to sleep sobbing
>every night for two solid years in Da Nang.
>
>A vet is the POW who went away one person and came back another - or
>didn't come back at all.
>
>A vet is the drill instructor who has never seen combat - but has saved
>countless lives by turning slouchy, no-account punks and gang members
>into marines, airmen, sailors, soldiers and coast guardsmen, and
>teaching them to watch each other's backs.
>
>A vet is the parade-riding Legionnaire who pins on his ribbons and
>medals with a prosthetic hand.
>
>A vet is the career quartermaster who watches the ribbons and medals
>pass him by.
>
>A vet 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.
>
>A vet 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.
>
>A vet is an ordinary and yet 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.
>
>A vet is a soldier and a savior and a sword against the darkness, and he
>is nothing more that 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.
>
>Again, two little words that mean a lot to any Veteran -- "THANK YOU."
>
>http://www.globalspecialoperations.com/whatisvet.html
>
>Art
>
>--
>art fougner, md
>
>"I knew I was going to take the wrong train, so I left early."
>Lawrence Peter Berra
>
