I wanted to share this with you guys. This is what I found on my mail this morning.

Dad:

I thought you might like this.

Love ya,

Ron

WHAT IS A VET?

Some veterans bear visible signs of their service: missing a 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 badages or emblems. You can't tell a vet just by looking.

He is the cop on the beat who spent six months in Saudi Arabia sweating two gallons a day making sure the armored personal 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 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 never saw 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 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 who 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 the ordinary and yet an extraordinary human being-a person who offered some of his life's vital years in the service of his country,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,greatest nation ever known.

So remember,each time you see someone who has served our country,just lean other 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."