You know, when I joined up with this board I was a normal civilian, and I intended to stay that way, but I ended up joining the military myself. When I was a civilian, stuff such as the yellow ribbons and the flag pins just seemed kind of cheesy, a way to say "I'm doing something" when really if you just looked at it from the outside only, it looks like it's the bottom of the pot; but now I'm here, even right now I'm in the barracks at Fort Sam Houston, MEDCOM in the middle of San Antonio in training to become a combat medic so that I can myself go with a unit potentially into a combat zone with the sole purpose of saving as many of the wounded people (our troops, their civilians and yes, their troops) as I can, and the more personally immersed you are into such a situation, the more the things that seem small mean when you look at them from the outside. Just take it as words from a soldier who is no different than you except the fact that they make me a)keep short hair b)wear boots and mostly camo cloths c)wake up at 4 am for physical training every day d)spend 9 hours or so a day in class on weekdays and e)eat less than perfect food daily.
