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 canceled 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 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 "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