Veteran's Day

[StormKnight (1)]

These two always choked me up. I Read Through the Thayer in honor of Memorial Day a few years to friends, and the last part of this speech I nearly broke down.

General Douglas MacArthur's Thayer Award Speech:

Duty, Honor, Country

No human being could fail to be deeply moved by such a tribute as this [Thayer Award]. Coming from a profession I have served so long and a people I have loved so well, it fills me with an emotion I cannot express. But this award is not intended primarily to honor a personality, but to symbolize a great moral code-a code of conduct and chivalry of those who guard this beloved land of culture and ancient descent. For all hours and for all time, it is an expression of the ethics of the American soldier. That I should be integrated in this way with so noble an ideal arouses a sense of pride, and yet of humility, which will be with me always.

Duty, honor, country: Those three hallowed words reverently dictate what you ought to be, what you can be, what you will be. They are your rallying point to build courage when courage seems to fail, to regain faith when there seems to be little cause for faith, to create hope when hope becomes forlorn.

Unhappily, I possess neither that eloquence of diction, that poetry of imagination, nor that brilliance of metaphor to tell you all that they mean.

The unbelievers will say they are but words, but a slogan, but a flamboyant phrase. Every pedant, every demagogue, every cynic, every hypocrite, every troublemaker, and, I am sorry to say, some others of an entirely different character, will try to downgrade them even to the extent of mockery and ridicule.

But these are some of the things they do. They build your basic character. They mold you for your future roles as the custodians of the Nation's defense. They make you strong enough to know when you are weak, and brave enough to face yourself when you are afraid.

What the Words Teach

They teach you to be proud and unbending in honest failure, but humble and gentle in success; not to substitute words for actions, not to seek the path of comfort, but to face the stress and spur of difficulty and challenge; to learn to stand up in the storm, but to have compassion on those who fall; to master yourself before you seek to master others; to have a heart that is clean, a goal that is high; to learn to laugh, yet never forget how to weep; to reach into the future, yet never neglect the past; to be serious, yet never to take yourself too seriously; to be modest so that you will remember the simplicity of true greatness, the open mind of true wisdom, the meekness of true strength.

They give you a temperate will, a quality of the imagination, a vigor of the emotions, a freshness of the deep springs of life, a temperamental predominance of courage over timidity, of an appetite for adventure over love of ease.

They create in your heart the sense of wonder, the unfailing hope of what next, and joy and inspiration of life. They teach you in this way to be an officer and a gentleman.

And what sort of soldiers are those you are to lead? Are they reliable? Are they brave? Are they capable of victory?

Their story is known to all of you. It is the story of the American man-at-arms. My estimate of him was formed on the battlefield many, many years ago, and has never changed. I regarded him then, as I regard him now, as one of the world's noblest figures; not only as one of the finest military characters, but also as one of the most stainless.

His name and fame are the birthright of every American citizen. In his youth and strength, his love and loyalty, he gave all that mortality can give. He needs no eulogy from me; or from any other man. He has written his own history and written it in red on his enemy's breast.

But when I think of his patience in adversity of his courage under fire and of his modesty in victory, I am filled with an emotion of admiration I cannot put into words. He belongs to history as furnishing one of the greatest examples of successful patriotism. He belongs to posterity as the instructor of future generations in the principles of liberty and freedom. He belongs to the present, to us, by his virtues and by his achievements.

Witness to the Fortitude

In 20 campaigns, on a hundred battlefields, around a thousand camp fires, I have witnessed that enduring fortitude, that patriotic self-abnegation, and that invincible determination which have carved his statue in the hearts of his people.

From one end of the world to the other, he has drained deep the chalice of courage. As I listened to those songs [of the glee club], in memory's eye I could see those staggering columns of the first World War, bending under soggy packs on many a weary march, from dripping dusk to drizzling dawn, slogging ankle deep through the mire of shell-pocked roads to form grimly for the attack, bule-lipped, covered with sludge and mud, chilled by the wind and rain, driving home to their objective, and for many to the judgment seat of God.

I do not know the dignity of their birth, but I do know the glory of their death. They died, unquestioning, uncomplaining, with faith in their hearts, and on their lips the hope that we would go on to victory.

Always for them: Duty, honor, country. Always their blood, and sweat, and tears, as we sought the way and the light and the truth. And 20 years after, on the other side of the globe, again the filth of murky foxholes, the stench of ghostly trenches, the slime of dripping dugouts, those boiling suns of relentless heat, those torrential rains of devastating storms, the loneliness and utter desolation of jungle trails, the bitterness of long separation from those they loved and cherished, the deadly pestilence of tropical disease, the horror of stricken areas of war.

Swift and Sure Attack

Their resolute and determined defense, their swift and sure attack, their indomitable purpose, their complete and decisive victory - always through the bloody haze of their last reverberating shot, the vision of gaunt, ghastly men, reverently following your password of duty, honor, country.

The code which those words perpetuate embraces the highest moral law and will stand the test of any ethics or philosophies ever promulgated for the things that are right and its restraints are from the things that are wrong. The soldier, above all other men, is required to practice the greatest act of religious training--sacrifice. In battle, and in the face of danger and death, he discloses those divine attributes which his Maker gave when He created man in His own image. No physical courage and no greater strength can take the place of the divine help which alone can sustain him. However hard the incidents of war may be, the soldier who is called upon to offer and to give his life for his country is the noblest development of mankind.

You now face a new world, a world of change. The thrust into outer space of the satellite, spheres, and missiles marks a beginning of another epoch in the long story of mankind. In the five or more billions of years the scientists tell us it has taken to form the earth, in the three or more billion years of development of the human race, there has never been a more abrupt or staggering evolution.

We deal now, not with things of this world alone, but with the illimitable distances and as yet unfathomed mysteries of the universe. We are reaching out for a new and boundless frontier. We speak in strange terms of harnessing the cosmic energy, of making winds and tides work for us, of creating unheard of synthetic materials to supplement or even replace our old standard basics; to purify sea water for our drink; of mining ocean floors for new fields of wealth and food; of disease preventatives to expand life into the hundred of years; of controlling the weather for a more equitable distribution of heat and cold, of rain and shine; of spaceships to the moon; of the primary target in war, no longer limited to the armed forces of an enemy, but instead to include his civil populations; of ultimate conflict between a united human race and the sinister forces of some other planetary galaxy; of such dreams and fantasies as to make life the most exciting of all times.

And through all this welter of change and development your mission remains fixed, determined, inviolable. It is to win our wars. Everything else in your professional career is but corollary to this vital dedication. All other public purposes, all other public projects, all other public needs, great or small, will find others for their accomplishment; but you are the ones who are trained to fight.

The Profession of Arms

Yours is the profession of arms, the will to win, the sure knowledge that in war there is no substitute for victory, that if you lose, the Nation will be destroyed, that the very obsession of your public service must be duty, honor, country.

Others will debate the controversial issues, national and international, which divide men's minds. But serene, calm, aloof, you stand as the Nation's war guardian, as its lifeguard from the raging tides of international conflict, as its gladiator in the arena of battle. For a century and a half you have defended, guarded, and protected its hallowed traditions of liberty and freedom, of right and justice.

Let civilian voices argue the merits or demerits of our processes of government: Whether our strength is being sapped by deficit financing indulged in too long, by Federal paternalism grown too mighty, by power groups grown too arrogant, by politics grown too corrupt, by crime grown too rampant, by morals grown too low, by taxes grown too high, by extremists grown too violent; whether our personal liberties are as thorough and complete as they should be.

These great national problems are not for your professional participation or military solution. Your guidepost stands out like a ten-fold beacon in the night: Duty, honor, country.

You are the leaven which binds together the entire fabric of our national system of defense. From your ranks come the great captains who hold the Nation's destiny in their hands the moment the war tocsin sounds.

The long, gray line has never failed us. Were you to do so, a million ghosts in olive drab, in brown khaki, in blue and gray, would rise from their white crosses, thundering those magic words: Duty, honor, country.

Prays for Peace

This does not mean that you are warmongers. On the contrary, the soldier above all other people prays for peace, for he must suffer and bear the deepest wounds and scars of war. But always in our ears ring the ominous words of Plato, that wisest of all philosophers: "Only the dead have seen the end of war."

The shadows are lengthening for me. The twilight is here. My days of old have vanished--tone and tint. They have gone glimmering through the dreams of things that were. Their memory is one of wondrous beauty, watered by tears and coaxed and caressed by the smiles of yesterday. I listen vainly, but with thirsty ear, for the witching melody of faint bugles blowing reveille, of far drums beating the long roll.

In my dreams I hear again the crash of guns, the rattle of musketry, the strange, mournful mutter of the battlefield. But in the evening of my memory always I come back to West Point. Always there echoes and re-echoes: Duty, honor, country.

Today marks my final roll call with you. But I want you to know that when I cross the river, my last conscious thoughts will be of the corps, and the corps, and the corps.

I bid you farewell.

-----------

In Flanders Fields

By: Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD (1872-1918)

Canadian Army

IN FLANDERS FIELDS the poppies blow

Between the crosses row on row,

That mark our place; and in the sky

The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved and were loved, and now we lie

In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:

To you from failing hands we throw

The torch; be yours to hold it high.

If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

In Flanders fields.

--Rest easy, my friends...rest easy

Edited November 7, 2008 by StormKnight

[TitsMcGee]

Thank you for serving Mike *hugs*

[Rev.Reverence]

Happy days bro...all of them..not just this one.

...& to ALL the other service peoples... *saluteslfthanded* GOOD JOB & THANX!

[StormKnight (1)]

Bump for the day.

[hunhee]

Pinned for the special day.. thanks troops!!!!

[Rev.Reverence]

WHOOT! WHOOT!

[freydis]

Thanks, for all you have done.

[StormKnight (1)]

DADDY, 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 America

safe wear no badge or emblem. You can't tell a vet just by

looking.

So 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 Parris Island 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 any of 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, 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".

"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 protester to

burn the flag."

Father Denis Edward O'Brien, USMC

Remember November 11th is Veterans Day

And at last:

A letter from someone who I would be a fellow alumni to, had I made it through my original training:

Greetings all from hot, hot, hot Iraq,

We are short indeed...although not quite as short as we had originally thought...our flight home has been posted and is showing up 3 days later than planned. The good news is that we leave in the middle of the night and arrive (all admin complete, including turning our weapons into the armory) around dinnertime at Pendleton on the same day we leave (11 hrs time difference). The other good news is it appears we've got commercial contract air carriers taking us home...so we don't have to worry about sleeping on the cold steel deck of an Air Force C-17.

So...we turned over authority of the surgical company last week to our replacements, who had a serious trial by fire here in multiple ways, including multiple traumas, surgeries, increased risk to their personal safety, power outages, water outages, and camel spiders in the hospital...all in their first 4 days. But a few days ago, we heard the helicopters coming and knew they were dealing with multiple traumas, several of which were going to the OR...and we sat in our barracks and waited for them to call us if they needed us. They never did. Last week was the ceremony to mark the official end of our role here. Now we just wait.

As the days move very slowly by, just waiting, I decided that one of the things I should work on for my own closure and therapeutic healing...is a list. The list would be a comparison: "Things That Were Good" about Iraq and being deployed with the Marines as one of the providers in a surgical company, and "Things That Were Not Good." Of course, it's quite obvious that this list will be very lopsided. But I thought I would do it anyway, hoping that somehow the trauma, the fear, the grief, the laughter, the pride and the patriotism that have marked this long seven months for me will begin to make sense, through my writing. Interestingly, it sort of turned into a poem. To be expected, I guess.

Most of all it's just therapy, and by now I should be relatively good at that. Hard to do for yourself, though.

So here goes...in reverse order of importance...

Things That Were Good

Sunset over the desert...almost always orange

Sunrise over the desert...almost always red

The childlike excitement of having fresh fruit at dinner after going weeks without it

Being allowed to be the kind of clinician I know I can be, and want to be, with no limits placed and no doubts expressed

But most of all,

The United States Marines, our patients...

Walking, every day, and having literally every single person who passes by say "Hoorah, Ma'am..."

Having them tell us, one after the other, through blinding pain or morphine-induced euphoria..."When can I get out of here? I just want to get back to my unit..."

Meeting a young Sergeant, who had lost an eye in an explosion...he asked his surgeon if he could open the other one...when he did, he sat up and looked at the young Marines from his fire team who were being treated for superficial shrapnel wounds in the next room...he smiled, laid back down, and said, "I only have one good eye, Doc, but I can see that my Marines are OK."

And of course, meeting the one who threw himself on a grenade to save the men at his side...who will likely be the first Medal of Honor recipient in over 11 years...

My friends...some of them will be lifelong in a way that is indescribable

My patients...some of them had courage unlike anything I've ever experienced before

My comrades, Alpha Surgical Company...some of the things witnessed will traumatize them forever, but still they provided outstanding care to these Marines, day in and day out, sometimes for days at a time with no break, for 7 endless months

And last, but not least...

Holding the hand of that dying Marine

Things That Were Not Good

Terrifying camel spiders, poisonous scorpions, flapping bats in the darkness, howling, territorial wild dogs, flies that insisted on landing on our faces, giant, looming mosquitoes, invisible sand flies that carry leischmaniasis

132 degrees

Wearing long sleeves, full pants and combat boots in 132 degrees

Random and totally predictable power outages that led to sweating throughout the night

Sweating in places I didn't know I could sweat...like wrists, and ears

The roar of helicopters overhead

The resounding thud of exploding artillery in the distance

The popping of gunfire...

Not knowing if any of the above sounds is a good thing, or bad thing

The siren, and the inevitable "big voice" yelling at us to take cover...

Not knowing if that siren was on someone's DVD or if the big voice would soon follow

The cracking sound of giant artillery rounds splitting open against rock and dirt

The rumble of the ground...

The shattering of the windows...

Hiding under flak jackets and kevlar helmets, away from the broken windows, waiting to be told we can come to the hospital...to treat the ones who were not so lucky...

Watching the helicopter with the big red cross on the side landing at our pad

Worse...watching Marine helicopters filled with patients landing at our pad...because we usually did not realize they were coming...

Ushering a sobbing Marine Colonel away from the trauma bay while several of his Marines bled and cried out in pain inside

Meeting that 21-year-old Marine with three Purple Hearts...and listening to him weep because he felt ashamed of being afraid to go back

Telling a room full of stunned Marines in blood-soaked uniforms that their comrade, that they had tried to save, had just died of his wounds

Trying, as if in total futility, to do anything I could, to ease the trauma of group after group...that suffered loss after loss, grief after inconsolable grief...

Washing blood off the boots of one of our young nurses while she told me about the one who bled out in the trauma bay...and then the one who she had to tell, when he pleaded for the truth, that his best friend didn't make it...

Listening to another of our nurses tell of the Marine who came in talking, telling her his name...about how she pleaded with him not to give up, told him that she was there for him...about how she could see his eyes go dull when he couldn't fight any longer...

And last, but not least...

Holding the hand of that dying Marine

Edited November 12, 2008 by StormKnight

[Rev.Reverence]

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.

^made me cry^

...& now I gotta' go calm it...

It is the soldier, not the poet, Who has given us freedom of

speech.

^The poetry kiddz will hear about this my freind...you know this!

Thanx for sharin' Stormy...(yup...everybody get's a nic)...

[StormKnight (1)]

The e-mail from my friend (the one in turquoise,) is the one that got me going. It has been since 2003 since I read that letter, and it still made me weep.

In a strange sense, I still wish I was out there with him, or on an FST (Foward Surgical Team.)

[StormKnight (1)]

Dug this up for today. I almost forgot until I came into the VA and things were in weekend mode.

To be honest, I couldn't find better manuscripts among my searches.

[Msterbeau]

I don't think I can ever just simply say thank-you when there are qualifications in my head that also need to be expressed. So here goes:

1. To the politicians and leaders who would use this gift to further their own agendas, I hope karma kicks you in the ass, hard.

2. To the people who enter service with selfish and evil in their hearts and do more harm then good while wearing the uniform. Go see a therapist or drop dead.

3. To the rest, who render service to their country with humbleness and honor - Thank you.

[KatRN05]

Words cannot express the enormous gratitude I feel for those who enlist in the U.S. military. These men and women put their lives on the line in order to protect our country and for that, I cannot thank you enough.

[Guest Megalicious]

awwww...