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 armoured personnel carriers didn't run out of fuel.

He is the barroom loudmouth, dumber than five wooden planks, whose
overgrown frat-boy behaviour 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 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 valour 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 saviour 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 protester to burn the
flag."