Dear Friends and Family,
I hope that you will spare me a few minutes of your
time to tell youabout something that I saw on Monday, October 27.
I had been attending a conference in Annapolis and was
coming home onSunday. 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 Iwound 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
