To me, heroes are not those who don basketball jerseys, football helmets, or baseball gloves. The real heroes dont drive million dollar cars on a Sunday afternoon around a racetrack of beer thirsty spectators. The real heroes dont sit in large legislative sessions making a mockery of our democracy and freedoms we take for granted.
Rather, the real heroes are those who work for less than what many of us would be willing to accept, work longer than many of us have ever considered, and work under stresses many of us could not comprehend and in the end, do it to the point that they would keep doing it to their dying breath.
The real heroes are those who are standing and have stood on the front lines of foreign nations to protect our freedoms and prevent the enemy from stepping on US soil.
The real heroes are the ones performing maintenance on the vehicles to get the troops safely back to camp after going on patrol. They ensure that the troops have a warm meal when they get back to camp. They are the ones walking the ruins of shelled out buildings in a foreign land with rifles in hand and ready to defend in a split second knowing they are targeted by many who wish them harm yet are too cowardly to confront them.
The real heroes are the ones who have gone on patrol through the fields of Europe, the rice paddies of Vietnam, and suffered the unbearable cold of those Korean Winter nights. Those heroes have walked the sands of Africa, the jungles of Asia, and the beaches of the south Pacific. They have experienced oil raining down from the heavens and complete darkness from burning oil fields, roads that have been bombed out, and experienced the loss of their best friends, their brothers in arms who have given their life so that others may live.
The real heroes are those who gave their life in the end so that we can live our lives of freedom, democracy, and the right to pursuit happiness, even at the expense that many have not made it back home. Those who did make it back home were treated with a Warriors welcome during World War II, yet treated rudely with disdain and disgust by those too naive to fully understand the sacrifices they made over in Korea and Vietnam. Yet in the end, those true heroes gave all and deserve everything.
For the soldiers serving at home and abroad, whether you are carrying a wrench or a machine gun, whether you are sleeping in bunk, a tent, a bed, or in the field. For the veteran who has come home and served in any capacity to ensure that the freedoms that my family and I have to live in a land of the free and the home of the truly brave heroes, I thank you.
And to those who still have yet to come home and will become a veteran someday, know that every minute of every hour, of every day that you spend protecting the rights, freedoms, and nation that we all live in does not go unnoticed and is not forgotten.
So whether you are currently serving in the military or a veteran of the services and back home in the USA, know that at least one out there is proud of you and thanks you for everything you did during your time in the service.
Sincerely,
Brian Hoberg
atriot:
