What is a veteran/retiree???

These are the people that Reid et al choose to kick to the curb so they can fund illegals…

What is a veteran and retiree?

Some veterans and retirees 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 veteran just by looking.

What is a veteran?

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 out weighed 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 Marine Corps 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 your next-door neighbor, who endured fierce door-to-door fighting in Fallujah only to see his best friend blown up by a terrorist carbomb while returning from patrol.

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 savior and 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”.

Remember Veterans Day, Memorial Day, EVERY Day…

“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 protester to burn the flag.”

Father Denis Edward O’Brien, USMC

Comments

What is a veteran/retiree??? — 14 Comments

  1. Amen and god bless all of our veterans. congress should give up their benefits and not steal form those who serve with more honor and diginity than they possess. Part of Honor means keeping your word. Promises were made and should be kept.

  2. I passed this along. However, my intro was a bit stronger worded than yours. I’m in the process of writing my soon to be ex-rep. Right after this vote he announced that he was retiring. In my opinion, he’s nothing but a quisling coward.

  3. I had a few words with my Senator’s reps and my Congressman’s reps about their vote . . . and assured them the every vet in Iowa will remember come next November.

    Thanks to all for your service . . .

  4. Great post! To a large segment of our population, the veteran is a necessary nuisance. Kind of like the garbage truck disturbing their sleep and/or commute. It is unlikely anything we say will dent their smug little world. While it is not right, enough of us will carry on so they can continue living in their smug world. What they will never know is respect. May they never know a world without veterans to protect their sorry asses.

  5. I think we should email that to every senator who voted for this budget.
    I did hear today that it is now on the congressional agenda to review it. I think some folks are worrying about keeping thier job in 2014.

  6. We walk the ramparts so others will not have to be disturbed, It is something that we do. There are times that Robert Heinlein vision would be real. Read Starship troopers, in that book the only people that could vote were those that have served. He believed that if somebody is willing to give the U.S. Government a blank check with payment including life if necessary would look to the best interest of the nation, not self when voting.

  7. So true.
    My daughters are learning to honor and respect our veterans.
    They see their father sometimes with tears in his eyes as he shakes an elderly veteran hand and thanks him for his service.
    I am sharing this.