Appropriate for Memorial Day.
theferret has an old but very good essay up at his journal: A Love Letter To Those Who Kill.
When I was in the fifth grade, my class went to Washington, DC for a school trip, and a big part of it involved visiting war memorials and the Arlington National Cemetary. I'm not exactly sure how it happened, but I was chosen to lay a wreath dedicated by our school at the Tomb of the Unknowns. Frankly, I was terrified. I was absolutely sure that I was going to trip or drop the wreath or forget what I was supposed to do when one of the soldiers came up the stairs to where we were sitting and asked if we were ready to go. He'd seemed huge and imposing at first, but when he took off his suglasses and explained what we were going to do, something clicked for me: he wasn't a scary man in a uniform, he was...just a person. And a nice one, at that. He smiled at me and my nervous companions and told us not to be afraid, we'd do absolutely fine.
We laid the wreath. Everything went exactly as planned. The soldier shook our hands and thanked us for our help afterwards. My mom got a few pictures of me standing next to him, and then our class moved on to other destinations. It was a pretty neat experience, sure, but it took a while for the impact of what I learned during that trip to sink in. If the intimidating man in uniform back in DC was really a reassuring guy with a nice smile, then chances were that other soldiers were just people too. Not superheroes, not a strange, unapproachable breed of human being, just people who are willing to lay down their lives to keep the rest of us safe. For a fifth-grade kid, that's a pretty intense lesson to learn. Those seemingly infinite rows of white crosses took on a meaning that's stayed with me ever since.
I guess the only thing I can say is thank you, and God bless.