"What Is A Vet?"
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 Australia safe
wear no badge or emblem.
You can not tell a Vet just by looking.
What is a vet?
He is the cop on the beat who spent six months
in Saudi Arabia sweating two litres a day making sure
the armoured personnel carriers did not run out of fuel.
He is the barroom loudmouth,
dumber than five wooden planks,
whose overgrown school-boy behaviour 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 their quarters.
He is the POW who went away one person
and came back another
or did not come back AT ALL.
He is the Drill Instructor teaching his charges to
watch each other's backs.
He is the parade riding Veteran who pins on his ribbons
and medals with a prosthetic hand.
He is the anonymous hero in
The Tomb Of The Unknown,
whose presence at Canberra must forever
preserve the memory of all the anonymous heroes
whose valour 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 saviour 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 is 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"
"THANK YOU" for serving in Vietnam
and LEST WE FORGET!
Cat Kelly
Spouse of a former Vice Commander,
Air Tactical Command TSN Hqts, VN Air Force.