> 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
> 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 drill instructor who has never seen combat - but has
> saved countless lives by turning slouchy, no-account punks and gang
> members into marines, airmen, sailors, soldiers and coast guardsmen, 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 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 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, and
> he is nothing more that 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".