[HoE] Veteran's Day [ot]

[Allan Seyberth <darious@darious.com>]

In honor of the military themes within the Hell On Earth and Deadlands
games, I'd like to repost something I posted last year.

                                               WHAT IS A VETERAN?

Some veterans bear visible signs of there 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?

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 Basic Training Company drill instructor who never seen combat -
but has saved countless lives by turning slouchy, no-account rednecks and
gang members into Soldiers, 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 he 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
their's.

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".

Remember, November 11th is Veterans 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 protesters to burn the flag."

        Father Denis Edward O'Brien, USMC

-------------------
Allan Seyberth
darious@darious.com

Why did the chicken cross the road?

Thomas Paine:
Out of common sense.