posted 11-10-2003 09:32 PM         

To all our board members that are Veterans or currently serving, while it certainty doesn’t seem like near enough, thank you.

posted 11-10-2003 10:40 PM         

I post this every Veterans Day. As a Vietnam Vet it means allot to me .
Here it is:

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 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 Army drill instructor who has 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/she is the pilot/crewmember/ground support person that keeps airpower
an effective tool of national policy.

He is the carrier pilot landing on a rolling, pitching, heaving flight
during a rain squall in the pitch-black night of the Tonkin Gulf.

He is the parade-riding Legionnaire who pins on his ribbons and medals
with a prosthetic hand.

He is the career quartermaster (Army Supply Corps) who watches the
ribbons and medals pass him by.

He is the Navy SEAL who humps endless miles of burning sand for three
days with no sleep or food and very little water to designate targets for
laser guided bombs or swims through a disease infested swamp and crawls
over
poisonous snakes under the cover of darkness to conduct intelligence on a
foreign government hostile to our own and our cherished way of life.

He is the annonymous 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, a sailor, an airman 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"

Author Unknown

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posted 11-11-2003 12:59 AM         

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Yellow is DCOOLEST

posted 11-11-2003 03:27 AM         

The Wall

My first trip to The Wall...
Did he return, or did he fall?

He didn't want to go to that foreign land,
but he did his best to lend a helping hand.

I was just a boy, and he was little more...
but he went off to fight in that foreign war.

He looked for comfort as the planes they soared,
as those bullets flew, and those cannons roared.

There's so many names. I feel so lost.
I'm truely in awe at what this war has cost.

As I reached out for the name on that wall,
my eyes teared up, and my heart did fall.

He did his best to win that fight.
He gave his all on that dark filled night.

I traced his name in the silence that day.
And on bended knee, I knelt to pray...

"You went off to war far across the sea,
so that the rest of us could all live free.

You took your arms and joined the ranks.
And for giving your all, we give you our thanks.

Wherever you be, wherever you roam,
in touching this wall I welcome you home.

posted 11-11-2003 06:10 AM         

Debbie

posted 11-11-2003 12:54 PM         

My flag is out, and thanks.

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