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 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".
Remember November 11th is
Veteran's Day
From a speech made by Capt John S.
McCain, USN, (ret) who represents Arizona in the U.S. Senate to the
Labetti VFW Post, Staten Island, NY,1 Nov 99.
THE
PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE
"As you may know, I spent five and
one half years as aprisoner of war during the Vietnam War. In the
early years of ourimprisonment, the NVA kept us in solitary
confinement or two or three to acell. In 1971 the NVA moved us
from these conditions of isolation intolarge rooms with as many as 30
to 40 men to a room. This was, as you can imagine, a wonderful
change and
was a direct result of the efforts of millions of Americans on behalf
of
a few
hundred POWs 10,000 miles from home.
One of the men who moved into my
room was a young man namedMike Christian. Mike came from a small town
near Selma, Alabama. He didn't wear a pair of shoes 'til he was 13
years old. At 17, he enlisted in the US Navy.
He later earned a commission by going to Officer Training School. Then
he became a Naval Flight Officer and was shot down and captured in
1967.
Mike had a keen and deep
appreciation of the Opportunities this country - and our military -
provide for people who want to work and want to succeed. As part
of the change in treatment, the Vietnamese allowed some prisoners to
receive packages from home. In some of these packages were
handkerchiefs, scarves and other items of clothing.
Mike got himself a bamboo needle. Over a period of a couple of
months, he created an American flag and sewed it on the inside of his
shirt. Every afternoon, before we had a bowl of soup, we would
hang Mike's shirt on the wall of the cell and say the Pledge of
Allegiance. I know the Pledge of Allegiance may not seem the most
important part of our day now. But I can assure you that in that
stark cell it was indeed the most important and meaningful event.
One day the Vietnamese searched
our
cell, as they did periodically, and discovered Mike's shirt with the
flag
sewn inside, and removed it. That evening they returned, opened the
door
of the cell, and for the benefit of all of us, beat Mike Christian
severely for the next couple of hours.
Then, they opened the door of the
cell and threw him in. We cleaned him up as well as we could. The
cell in which we lived had a concrete slab in the middle on which we
slept. Four naked lightbulbs hung in each corner of the room. As
I said, we tried to clean up Mike as well as we could. After the
excitement died down, I
looked in the corner of the room, and sitting there beneath that dim
light
bulb with a piece of red cloth, another shirt and his
bamboo needle, was my friend, Mike Christian. He was sitting
there with his eyes almost shut from the beating he had received,
making another American flag.
He was not making the flag because
it made Mike Christian feel better. He was making that flag
because he knew how important it was to us to be able to pledge our
allegiance to our flag and country.
So the next time you say the
Pledge of Allegiance, you must never forget the sacrifice and courage
that thousands of Americans have made to build our nation and promote
freedom around the world. You must remember our duty, our honor,
and our country.
'I pledge allegiance to the flag
of the United States of America and to the republic for which it
stands, one
nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all'
November
11th represents the anniversary of the signing of the Armistice in the
Forest of Campiegne by the Allies and the Germans in 1918 (the 11th
hour of the
11th day of the 11th month). This signified the end of World War I and
was
originally known as Armistice Day. President Woodrow Wilson signed the
Congressional Resolution on Nov. 11, 1919, the first Armistice Day.
However,
after World War II, the day began to lose meaning and since there were
many other veterans to consider, the decision was made to change
November 11th to honor all those who fought in American wars. The
United States Congress passed an act to change the name to Veteran's
Day and in 1954 President
Dwight Eisenhower signed the act.
With
that in mind, I would like to say "thank you" to all the men and women
with whom I served, and to especially remember those who aren't with us
anymore.
Tom
(HM2 USN 1965-69)
