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Wednesday, 27 July 2011 |
This story was passed on to us by one of our Veteran Volunteers:
I came back home from Kuwait in late 2002 alone, and spent the night in Baltimore before flying back home to Tucson the following day.
I arrived at the hotel mid-afternoon and after beginning to unwind after a walk, showered and dressed for a nice, all-American dinner of steak and potatoes with all the fixings. I sat at a small table in the corner of the restaurant reading a book when my server approached me about halfway through my meal. He told me that my dinner and drinks had been paid for by an older couple sitting across the dining room. I arose and walked over to them to thank them and they invited me to finish my dinner as their guests.
After the server settled me at their table and I thanked them for their generosity, the gentleman told me this story. It was obvious, he said that I was in the military and he wanted to thank me in his own way, as well as paying a long-standing debt.
This man was a WW II veteran, and after returning home from Europe in 1945,
he had little money to spend on train fare from New York to his home in a small farming town in Iowa. Instead, he hitchhiked across country. Since the only clothes he owned were his uniforms he mustered out with, he was picked up by numerous drivers. Some took him a few miles and some much further. One trucker picked him up and when told his destination, told this young GI that he was delivering his cargo to a town just a few miles from his farm so he would take him home.
As they passed through small towns, the driver asked this young soldier when the last time he had had a good meal was and was told not since departing the Brooklyn Navy Yard at the beginning of his trip. At the next sizable town, they stopped and this truck driver treated the soldier to a big steak dinner. The young man initially refused this generous offer due to the cost but was told by his host that he was simply paying forward a similar meal when he returned from WW I.
I don’t know how many generations this meal was paid forward but I have continued this tradition whenever I am in an airport or even a local eatery and happen upon a young GI obviously recently returned from deployment. I know how I felt so I understand how important it is to recognize our great men and women in uniform not only for what they are doing but for whom they are. I would hope that this story, will encourage more folks to pay this debt forward to our current generation of heroes.
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