 Coping
with the 9.11.01 Aftermath
What is a Veteran?
By: Father Denis Edward
O'Brien, USMC
What is a Veteran?
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 bar room 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.
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 Quantico drill instructor who never saw 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.
A Vet is the parade - riding Legionnaire who pins on 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 an extraordinary human being - a
person who offered some of life's most vital years in the service of our
country, and who sacrificed ambitions so others would not have to sacrifice
theirs.
The veteran whether soldier, sailor, airman, or marine is a sword against the
darkness, and is nothing more than the finest, greatest, testimony on behalf of
the finest, greatest nation God has allowed to exist.
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."
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