There are some common realities about the military, especially for those who fight in combat together. One of those is that you have a common mission, each knows their particular job in the plan. Each understands that he is responsible, not just for his part of the mission, but for the brother in either side of you and the team as a whole.
There is one more thing that is common: all of you are Marines, or soldiers, or sailors, etc. You are all part of a team, a unit, a Corps, etc. You are all engaged in a shared life and death reality. You are brothers-in-arms. There is no other reality like it.
The veteran in this story is a Cheyenne, Arapaho, Sioux warrior, who served his time in Vietnam with the Marine Corps. His name is Harvey Philip Pratt.
Like all of us, Pratt came into the military from a history unique to his family, his Native American culture and his own interior experience, but like all of us, he also became a Marine. He spent three years in the Corps, serving in Vietnam and getting out as a Lance Corporal. But in those short years and from the experience of combat shared with men from all over the country, from every background, he learned some valuable lessons.
Those lessons would carry over into his life back home after the war too.
One of the things Pratt understood from his culture and from his experience in the Corps was that a warrior has responsibilities beyond himself. He is charged with caring for the people around him. Those responsibilities are as serious as any you will find in life and one can only become a warrior when one knows and assumes those responsibilities, being the best Marine, the best leader, the best chief you can be, not for yourself, but for others.
Pratt has carried that sense of responsibility into the rest of his life as you will see and hear in this video. After the war he went into public service as a policeman, then a detective. He found both to be natural to his warrior and war time experience in that he was once again working in a team, a group working toward a common goal. Once again, the most important reality was caring for the guy next to you and the community he was serving.
All who have served carried some kind of a talisman, some object of personal importance with them, or adopted one when there. Several of the things Pratt mentions that were important to him are recognizable to all who served. One was the P-38, that simple, yet versatile and incredibly important can opener device that you carried with you at all times. And, of course, there were our dog tags. Many of us still have our dog tags. Pratt mentions that he wears his when he goes to veterans meetings.
Pratt had one very special item he carried with him as well. It was given to him by an elder in his tribe; a small pebble, a thirst pebble. It is just a small marble sized piece of stone, like a river stone. He was told that if he carried it, he would never be thirsty. He carried it with him the whole time he was in Vietnam, never telling anyone else about it, but he adds that he, like all of us, would always share his water.
He takes his role as an elder seriously now too. An elder has those responsibilities necessary of any good leadership. He is still taking care of his people and his fellow veterans. He is still trying to be the best veteran he can be. I think you will agree that he is doing just that.