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What is a Veteran
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

CH-46E mechanic carries rifle, guitar while deployed in support of OIF Submitted by: 3d Marine Aircraft Wing

KUWAIT(June 7, 2003) -- All is not quiet in the "tent city" at an air base here in the evening. After working on and around aircraft all day in temperatures that can reach more than 120 degrees, many of the service members here take advantage of an evening breeze to socialize, play cards and watch other Marines go about their business.

Entertainment is hard to come by here - there are a few small portable televisions and several sets of playing cards and dominoes, but almost everyone has some type of portable radio, compact disc player or mp3 device. Music, it seems, is difficult for these troops to live without.

Each General Purpose tent in the tent city will often have its own type of music wafting through the tent fabric; the latest rap or hip-hop hit can be heard from one 'hooch,' country music blares from the next.

All of the music is loud enough to hear from a distance, but one musical sound somehow carries above the rest, as a Marine with an acoustic guitar plays a classic song that almost everyone within hearing range knows some of the words to.

Lance Cpl. Bobby E. George, aviation ordinance technician, Marine Medium Helicopter Squadron 165, has become proficient at strumming the guitar he has been playing for less than five years.

So remember, each time you see someone who has served our country, just lean over and say Thank You.

Went to a concert Saturday (Ted Nugent and ZZ Top) and sat next to a man that had come alone. I started talking to him between sets and found out that one of his sons is in the Navy. I told him to please thank his son for his service to our country the next time they spoke. At first he looked surprised and then, with pride, told me he'd surely do that.