A veteran’s service in a war is significant not because we are special, but precisely because we aren’t. We went to high school with you, played on the junior varsity football team, got turned down by the pretty girl for the prom, got caught by the cops drinking underage. We are the same people from the same neighborhood you are.

This is the strength of America: the citizen-soldier, called from the cities and the farms and the suburbs, trained by professionals but representing us all, sent to do our country’s business. We volunteered, we went, we did what the nation asked. We did our duty, and we asked for—we deserve—nothing more.