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 soldiers, 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,
 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".