"Thank You Veterans"

For those who have served in the Armed Forces of the United States of America we are eternally grateful. 

For the lost sons and daughters of war we can only swear on our sacred honor 
that we will never forget their courageous sacrifice, and pray that theirs 
may be the last. 
Though war is not intrinsically a noble and honorable endeavor, it is those 
who rise to the challenge and engage in it for the greater good that make it 
so. 
They are all of us, and we are they. When one of them dies or is missing, our 
resolve is strengthened by the loss equal to the degree that the lost soldier 
is honored and remembered by we who remain alive and free. 
Thus, it is our patriotic duty to honor those who have been lost in the 
service of our country, 
and never allow them to be forgotten.

For those who have served honorably and returned alive, 
we celebrate the opportunity to welcome them home and thank them for their 
service. 
For they are the ones who, at an age when life is boundless and experience 
limited, leave their homes and families and travel to foreign lands to take 
up arms on our behalf. 
Too soon they become aware that victory, honor, and their very survival 
require more of them than idealistic rhetoric had ever revealed.
No amount of training has prepared them for what they must endure. And yet 
they stay...noble paladins...they obey, they endure, they fight on...they 
survive. 
When finally they return home, they are forever changed. Some outwardly, some in other ways. 

Now we must do no less than Thank and Honor them for doing what the rest of us could not, and Welcome them Home as the Heroes they have become. To do less diminishes us all.