"SOME GAVE ALL"
Billy Ray Cyrus
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 holdinga 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 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,
the 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 couldhave been
awarded or were awarded.
Two little words that mean a lot,
"THANK YOU."
author-
Father Denis Edward O'Brien
USMC
IN MEMORY.....
And a Salute to
those
Who are still with us
And to those not named
God Knows who you are !!!!
Honor Roll
King
Phillip's War
Colonial
Wars
French
Indian War
American
Revolution
War
of 1812
Mexican
War
Civil
War
World
War 1
Spanish
American War
World
War 11
Korean
Conflict
Vietnam
Grenada
Desert
Storm
Served
During Peace Time
September 11, 2001 and beyond
If , when you visit these
pages and you would
Like some names added
...please just send me a note
and I will be glad to post your name to the list
Tribute
to Alexander K. Ogilvie
2nd Lt. USMA AEF
IT IS SAD THAT
THERE IS NO NATIONAL WAR
MEMORIAL FOR WORLD WAR II
HELP ME SAY THANK YOU
TO ALL WHO SERVED
BEFORE THERE IS NO ONE LEFT TO THANK
The National World War II Memorial
The VietNam Casualty Search Page
SOS Support Our Soilders
AND PLEASE
LET
US NOT FORGET!!!!!!!!!!!
If any of you have
POW/MIAbraclets out there .
I would love to have the names
LCDR William John Metzger, Jr. USN pilot -
P.O.W. 1967-1973
Colonel Charles Day of Glendale, Arizona.
Returned Home :-)
Capt. Johnnie C. Cornelius, USAF 6-26-68 NVN
KOREAN
WAR POW/MIA
POW/MIA
HOME PAGE
POW-MIA
Names and Information
Operation
Just Cause ...
for
as long as it takes
AND
THIS IS FOR ALL OF YOU
THAT THINK EVEN THOUGH
YOU WHERE NOT ON
THE FRONT LINES>>>
OR SEVERED IN TIME OF PEACE
THAT SOMEHOW YOUR
CONTRIBUTIONS WHERE NOT AS
IMPORTANT
Charles Plumb,
a U.S. Naval Academy graduate,
was a fighter pilot in
Vietnam. After 75
combat missions, his plane was destroyed by a
surface-to-air missile.
Plumb ejected and parachuted
into enemy territory.
He was captured and spent
six years in a prison camp.
After the Vietnam
conflict,
when Plumb and his wife
were sitting in a restaurant,
a man at another table came up and said,
"You're Plumb! You
flew jet fighters in Vietnam
from the aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk.
You were shot down!"
"How in the world did you
know that?"
asked Plumb.
"I packed your parachute," the man replied.
Plumb gasped in surprise.
The man pumped his hand
and said,"I guess it worked!
" Plumb assured him,
"It sure did-if your chute hadn't
worked, I wouldn't be here today."
Plumb couldn't sleep that night,
thinking about that man. Plumb says, "I kept
wondering what he might
have looked like in a Navy uniform --
a Dixie cup hat,
a bib in the back, and bell bottom trousers.
I wondered how many times I might
have passed him on the Kitty Hawk.
I wondered
how many times I might
have seen him and not even said
'Good morning, how are you,'
or anything because,
you see,
I was a fighter pilot and he was just a sailor.
" Plumb thought of the
many hours
the sailor had spent on a long
wooden table in the bowels of
the ship carefully weaving the shrouds
and folding the silks of each chute,
holding in his hands each time
the fate of someone he didn't know.
"Who's packing your
parachute?
Everyone has someone
who provides what they
need to make it through the day.
Recognize and be gracious
to people who pack your parachute."
-Charles Plumb
from lectures about his prison
camp experience in Vietnam
WE THANK
YOU ALL !!!!!!!!
[ GuestBook by TheGuestBook.com ]