Gee, didn't I just get flamed a couple weeks ago for not noting my
message as having "No LBC content"? Wonder what JustBrits will say
about this thread.
But as the son and brother of four vets and the father of one, I say
Thanks. And sorry I was 4-F.
Danny
From: "Carl Elliott" <grunt2@adelphia.net>
To: "Richard D Arnold" <richard.arnold@juno.com>,
<mgs@autox.team.net>,
<spridgets@autox.team.net>
Subject: Re: Veteran's Day
Date: Tue, 10 Nov 1998 20:42:02 -0500
Reply-to: "Carl Elliott" <grunt2@adelphia.net>
Hoo Rah !! Carl E.
-----Original Message-----
From: Richard D Arnold <richard.arnold@juno.com>
To: mgs@autox.team.net <mgs@autox.team.net>; spridgets@autox.team.net
<spridgets@autox.team.net>
Date: Tuesday, November 10, 1998 7:18 AM
Subject: Veteran's Day
>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?
>
>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 crying
>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 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.
>
>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 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 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, 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's the soldier, not the reporter,
> Who gave us our freedom of the press.
> It's the soldier, not the poet,
> Who gave us our freedom of speech.
> It's the soldier, not the campus organizer,
> Who gave us our freedom to demonstrate.
>
> It's the soldier,
> Who salutes the flag,
> Who serves others with respect for the flag,
> And whose coffin is draped by the flag,
> Who allows the protestor to burn the flag."
>
>Attributed to: Father Denis Edward O'Brien, USMC
dannyr@umich.edu
English Department
UM-Flint
Flint, MI 48502
web site: http://www.flint.umich.edu/~dannyr
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