This Friday, November 11, is Veterans Day in the United States, and in some other countries it is called Remembrance Day. In honor of this special day I am posting the following. It was written for the US Military, but it applies to many others around the world.

What is a Veteran?


Attributed to Father Denis Edward O'Brian
Marine Corps chaplain

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. 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 ArlingtonNationalCemetery 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".


To all the veterans on this board (and I include myself in this number) Thanks for your service. To those who were under fire my special thanks. And to those who are currently serving (including my brother in the US Army), I'm behind you and my prayers are with you.

Please, if at all possible, do something to honor the veterans on Friday (and all days). Never forget that without their service and sacrifice, even something as simple as the right to contribute to this board would not be possible.