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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.
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 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 - 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 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 protestor to burn the flag."
Father Denis Edward O'Brien/USMC
I am not allowed to show my feelings
I am not allowed to cry
I walk tall
I hate the look in others
As they look at me
Like they are better than me
It is so easy for them to make a judgment
What gives them the right to judge me
Who has the right to judge my rights or wrongs?
I recognize my ways and know I am not perfect
I stand here knowing that I hurt many
I killed many
I fixed many
I saved many
Do all my good deeds make up for the murders?
I stand here ready to hear the final judgment
I got a feeling that I will never make it to heaven
I made my decision to live
I know it was wrong to take the lives
I listened to the gasps and heard the screams
The bullets going in
Nothing compared to the blade
As it slid in I watched the eyes turn blank
Heard the gasps as I closed my own eyes
I am to fix them yet I need to live too
Am I right to want to live another day?
I never agreed to murder others
I agreed to caring for the sick and injured
As I sit here I think about the nights I have
I never sleep because I see it all and hear it
There is nothing like the feeling of the blood all over you
The sounds of the screams
The smell of death
The sights in my sleep I wake up in cold sweats
I jump all the time and can't be around many things
Dear Father please let me in those gates
I think I suffered enough down here
I think that I have done a lot of good here
Please let me home
I didn't murder out of cold blood
It was me or them I swear I tried not to do it
I needed to save others so please forgive me
