This
work is normally attributed to the late Rev. Denis Edward O’Brien, a
Marine Chaplain. Although O’Brien used this work frequently during his
career, he denied authorship of it. The actual author is unknown.
Some veterans bear visible signs of their service: missing
a 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 sorter 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 by just 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 ArlingtonNationalCemetery
must forever preserve the memory of all 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 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 or
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 lot, “Thank
You”.
