What is a Veteran?

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 alloy forged in the refinery of adversity.

Except in parades, however, the men and women who have kept Australia 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 Iraq

sweating 6 litres a day making sure

the armoured personnel carriers didn't run out of fuel.

He is the bar room yobbo, thick as a short plank,

whose drunken antics are outweighed a hundred times

in the cosmic scales by four hours of exquisite bravery

near the East Timor border.

She or he is the nurse who fought against futility

and went to sleep sobbing every night for 12 Months

in Vung Tau.

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

He is the career quartermaster who watches the ribbons and medals pass him by.

He is one of the forgotten soldiers that fought on the one man front in Kokoda or held back the Chinese onslaught at Kapyong.

He is the POW who went away one person

and came back another - or didn't come back at all.

He is the drill instructor who has never seen combat - but has

saved countless lives by turning slouchy, no-account larrikins

and no hopers into Diggers, and teaching them

the creed of mateship.

He is the Vietnam Veteran, sundered from the society

that sent him to war. He was rejected but did not reject the

call to arms by people who would vilify him for doing his duty.

He is the anonymous warrior in The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, whose presence at the Australian War Memorial forever preserves the memory of all the Diggers whose valour dies unrecognised with them on the battlefield, in the sky or in the ocean's sunless deep.

He is the old guy bagging groceries at the local store - 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 a soldier and a saviour and a bulwark against the darkness, and he represents nothing more than the finest, most noble facets of mans existence.

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 tomorrow for your today.

So remember, this Anzac Day when you see the lined and weary face of a digger re-living the loss of mates in a Faraway land or trying to make sense of horrors no person should endure, just lean over and say "Thank You".

Let them know that you have not forgotten. For those that are left that simple act will be enough