GameHater's blog: "Only when I find something worthwhile"

My dad sent me this one last night and I wanted to share it.

What is a Veteran?  

 Written by Father Dennis Edward O'Brien - USMC  

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 or a piece of shrapnel in the leg . 
Except in parades, however, the men and women who have kept the world 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 armored personnel carriers didn't run out of fuel. 

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-accounts and gang members into Marines,

and teaching them to watch each other's backs. 

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 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

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 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".