Thought for the day

[bodypilot90 0]

I hope that you will spare me a few minutes of your time to tell you about
something that I saw on Monday, October 27.

I had been attending a conference in Annapolis and was coming home on
Sunday. As you may recall, Los Angeles International Airport was closed
on Sunday, October 26, because of the fires that affected air traffic
control. Accordingly, my flight, and many others, were canceled and I
wound up spending a night in Baltimore.

My story begins the next day. When I went to check in at the United counter
Monday morning I saw a lot of soldiers home from Iraq. Most were very young
and all had on their desert camouflage uniforms. This was as change from
earlier, when they had to buy civilian clothes in Kuwait to fly home. It
was a visible reminder that we are in a war. It probably was pretty close
to what train terminals were like in World War II.

Many people were stopping the troops to talk to them, asking them questions
in the Starbucks line or just saying "Welcome Home." In addition to all the
flights that had been canceled on Sunday, the weather was terrible in
Baltimore and the flights were backed up. So, there were a lot of unhappy
people in the terminal trying to get home, but nobody that I saw gave the
soldiers a bad time.

By the afternoon, one plane to Denver had been delayed several hours.
United personnel kept asking for volunteers to give up their seats and take
another flight. They weren't getting many takers. Finally, a United
spokeswoman got on the PA and said this, "Folks. As you can see, there are
a lot of soldiers in the waiting area. They only have 14 days of leave and
we're trying to get them where they need to go without spending any more
time in an airport then they have to. We sold them all tickets, knowing we
would oversell the flight. If we can, we want to get them all on this
flight. We want all the soldiers to know that we respect what you're doing,
we are here for you and we love you."

At that, the entire terminal of cranky, tired, travel-weary people, a
cross-section of America, broke into sustained and heart-felt applause. The
soldiers looked surprised and very modest. Most of them just looked at
their boots. Many of us were wiping away tears.

And, yes, people lined up to take the later flight and all the soldiers
went to Denver on that flight.

That little moment made me proud to be an American, and also told me why
we will win this war.

If you want to send my little story on to your friends and family, feel
free. This is not some urban legend. I was there, I was part of it, I saw
it happen.

Will Ross
Administrative Judge
United States Department of Defense

[velo90 0]

http://www.snopes.com/politics/war/onleave.asp just in case you are wondering.

Dave