A day at Baltimore's airport

Dan Swatzell of Cape Girardeau received this e-mail and thought that it should be shared:

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, Oct. 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, Oct. 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 Airlines 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 a 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 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 public-address system 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 than 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. All the soldiers went to Denver on that flight.

That little moment made me proud to be an American. It 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

Department of Defense