Proud of our Troops

[stratoman]

this is and email I received

Dear Friends and Family,

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 heartfelt 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