Billy Beck, last October described the scene [1]….
…during the recent island excursion, I happened to spend a few minutes in the atrium of Atlanta’s Hartsfield International Airport. (Oh wait… it’s now “Hartsfield-Race-Grifter-Maynard-Jackson International Airport”. I almost forgot.) Sitting there, I observed a line of troops in desert camo, standing two-abreast in the outlet of a corridor into the atrium space. On a signal, they took up their gear and began to move out, in column. They made their way through the atrium, and the whole place — perhaps three hundred people (it was early) — stood up as one, rendering a thunderous ovation for the whole time that the troops were in sight.
Lamed by the spectacle, I couldn’t move to get out my camera. I wish I had, though. It was terrific.
This description of Billy’s was my first thought as I watched this ad [2] that the Budwiser folks ran during the Superbowl. If you didn’t happen to see it, check it out.
It shames me that so many Americans would find such a ‘welcome back’ out of the ordinary. That it is, in fact unusual is the shameful legacy left behind by the anti-Vietnam war nutcases. (Sigh) Which leads me, logically, to the question of what the anti-Iraq idiots have cost us? It’ll be decades before we get that list completed, I think. But it doesn’t take a great deal to understand that they’ve cost us more by far than they’ve given us.
Too bad I don’t get into airports much.
(Updated for flow and correction 0208051603)