This was sent to a student of mine from a family friend. It is a nice story.

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 cancelled 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 cancelled 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 heart-felt 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