What's so special about veterans?

Did you vote last Tuesday? Do you vote regularly? Do you overcome obstacles and rearrange your day as much as it takes to get down there and vote on every Election Day?
If you answered “no” to any of those questions, I have another one for you. You do realize don’t you, that you are spurning the gift that has been offered to you by every veteran who ever wore a uniform? All that they have endured to preserve that privilege for you, and you are rejecting it unused?
Failure to vote is to reject and degrade veterans and all they represent. I don’t care if you’re the only Republican in a whole state full of Democrats, or vice versa, and you know for an absolute fact your vote won’t make a bit of difference. You vote! Because the physical and mental effort of voting expresses gratitude and respect for veterans.

Only a small fraction of veterans die, are wounded or even hear weapons fired in anger. It’s more common for them to endure physical discomfort, boredom, and frustration. Many of them postpone personal goals while they wear the uniform. But the military has accountants, lawyers, purchasing agents, and other positions that people make careers of choice. If you can put up with the military’s quirks, it’s a pretty good career. You can say the same thing about IBM, ExxonMobil, or Wal-Mart.
Veterans are not angels. I was interviewing soldiers at Fort Hood for a book, and two guys didn’t show up. I was told later that instead of talking to me, one of them was assigned to escort the other one to his court martial proceedings. For child molestation. And I really wanted to talk to that guy because he was hit by mortar fire near Tikrit, just a mile or so from Saddam’s secluded little hideaway.

So what's so special about veterans?

Every veteran has signed an I.O.U. that our leaders can call whenever they want. The face amount is “As much as you want, including my life.” I have a friend who was in the Air Force Band during Viet Nam. I kid him about defending the country armed with a clarinet. But we both know that for a thousand reasons or for no reason at all, he could have been sent out in the rice paddies to call in air missions under fire. Or sent to load ordnance on F-105’s and lost a leg when a 500-pound bomb rolled off a cart. He signed that I.O.U. and if it was called he had no recourse.

Some have their I.O.U. called to achieve something that seems worth the price or is at least memorable. Crossing the Delaware. Facing down the Barbary Pirates. Strafing the front lines at Gaudalcanal. Going in to cover a downed Blackhawk pilot in Mogadishu.
Others have their I.O.U called for nothing. They are killed or maimed in training. They charge up a hill that turns out to be the wrong one. “Friendly” aircraft bomb them by mistake. They die of disease. And it doesn’t achieve a thing and it's forgotten.
Dinsmore Ely, a World War I pilot, wrote to his (and my) fraternity brothers “It is not a sacrifice but an investment, when a young man dies for his country.” Sometimes it’s neither one, Dinny. Sometimes it’s a pointless unnecessary waste.
I often think about Dinny, 22 years old a week after that letter, when he rode his flaming wingless fuselage into the good earth of France. I wonder if his last thoughts were about the dividends his investment would yield for the rest of us. I wonder if he was hit blind out of the sun, never saw his enemy, and would have been better invested if he had stayed down and changed his engine oil that day.

Whatever lot they draw in their service, every veteran has spent a long time not knowing when their I.O.U. might be called without warning or explanation. Not knowing if it would be called for a meaningful purpose. Anybody who has endured that uncertainty so that We the People can choose who governs us “…deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.” Link

That is what's so special about veterans.