Posted on 11/11/2023 6:56:39 AM PST by pboyington
As Veterans’ Day arrives, it is important for those who have never served to take a moment to understand the solitary world of a vet.
Millions of vets are and have been successful in all endeavors. They are doctors, lawyers, business people and a thousand other professions. Not all have PTSD; not all are the troubled, brooding, street corner homeless guy, although they exist and need help desperately.
No matter how successful a vet might be materially, more often than not, vets are often alone, mentally and spiritually each day and for the rest of their lives.
Vets’ stories are all different, but some elements of the common experience exist.
Many vets experienced and saw and heard and did things unimaginable to the average person. They also lived a daily camaraderie that cannot be repeated in the civilian world. In fact, many vets spend the rest of their lives seeking the same esprit de corps that simply is absent from their civilian lives and jobs. They long to spend just 15 minutes back with the best friends they ever had, friends that are scattered to every corner of the earth, and some to the afterlife itself.
Vets are haunted by visions of horror and death, by guilt of somehow surviving and living the good life, when some they knew are gone. They strangely wish sometimes that they were back in those dreadful circumstances, not to experience the dirt and horror and terror and noise and violence again, but to be with the only people a vet really knows, other vets.
Civilians must understand that for a vet nothing is ever the same again. Their senses can be suddenly illuminated by the slightest sound or smell or sight: sights of death all around, a living version of Dante’s Inferno; sounds so loud that they can only be described as Saving Private Ryan in surround sound on steroids; smells vast and horrific; rotting death, burning fuel and equipment, rubber, animals and…people. The smoldering ruins of life all around them.
All vets have these thoughts nearly every day. Some may experience them for fractions of second, or for minutes at a time. They replay over and over again like an endless 24 hour war movie.
Part of the solitary world of the vet is being able to enjoy complete bliss doing absolutely nothing. This is a trait grating to civilians who must constantly search for endless stimuli. Unbeknownst to them, the greatest thrill of all is just being alive. A lot of vets have an Obi-wan Kenobi calmness. After what they went through, how bad can anything really be?
As King said to Chris in Platoon, “Make it outta here, it’s all gravy, every day of the rest of your life – gravy…”
So many, if not all vets walk around each day lost in their own special story. They were once great actors on a giant stage with speaking parts and props. Maybe they were heroes and now they aren’t anymore. Maybe they helped save the world and now they can’t. Maybe they gave orders and now they take them. Maybe they thought that they could accomplish anything and now they know they can’t. Perhaps their lives now are smaller and slower and sometimes in the vet’s mind, just incidental, even though they’re not.
Most civilians are oblivious to the solitary life of the vet. But, it’s there. It’s the same eternal and universal philosophy, whether you fought in World War II, Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf War, Iraq or Afghanistan. The experiences may have been different, but the emotions are the same.
A problem with the solitary world of the vet is that the vet has a hard time explaining what he or she did to those who didn’t serve. Some vets want to talk, but they have no outlet. Maybe their only outlet is watching a war movie or reading a book about the conflict they were in.
How often do people say, “Grandpa never talks about Korea.” That’s because Grandpa knows no one can understand except other vets. That’s because Grandpa knows most people don’t care.
Part of this taciturn mentality is that vets speak another language, a strange and archaic language of their past. How do you talk to civilians about “fire for effect” or “grid 7310” or “shake and bake” or “frag orders” or “10 days and a wake up” or a thousand and one other terms that are mystifying to the real world?
You can’t.
All of this adds to the solitary world of the vet. Some are better at handling life afterwards than others. Some don’t seem affected at all, but they are. They just hide it. Some never return to normal. But, what is normal to a vet anymore?
So, this Veterans’ Day, if you see a vet sitting by themselves at a restaurant or on a train or shopping at the grocery store alone, take a moment to speak with them. Take them out of their solitary world for a moment. You’ll be happy you did.
During and after Vietnam, veterans were treated poorly. I could feel the disdain of civilians at times in uniform in public at times during my enlistment. Now that our military is on the cutting edge of the Woke transformation of America and the world, we veterans are treated like Celebrities. Am I the only one that has the ominous feeling that this is a trap?
A Veteran is a soldier who is no longer active duty/reserve status. Not all Veterans went to war. Our military life was not in our own hands but subject to the whim of orders according to whatever Washington thought we needed to be doing. Please remember that everyone who served honorably is a Veteran:
“They also serve who only stand and wait.”
In remembrance of my Commander Army LTC Daniel E. Holland, who got the orders to deploy while I remained with the unit.
As a vet, I would say that this article applies to some, but not all, vets.
Today’s a good day for this:
George Carlin - “Shell Shock”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSp8IyaKCs0
Have a great Veterans Day to each and every veteran here in FR and all veterans everywhere...
JBW (U S Navy 1967-1973)
As a 22 year old Air Force officer during Vietnam, I never heard a “shot fired in anger.” On the other hand, I have never had as much responsibility and felt more alive since that time. Military experience cannot be explained to one who has never served and that is why most veterans don’t even try.
The movie “The Best Days Of Our Lives” covers that subject well.
Former USAF officer.
This article is overdone. Veterans don’t go through life miserable because they did their duty and moved on into the rest of their lives.
The article suggests everyone who ever wore a uniform goes through the rest of their years in some fashion alone and horrified about their past. That’s just not how it works.
Vets spent some number of years at an early age doing thing civilians never do. For one thing, for enlisted guys, they tore themselves away from home perhaps age 18 and travelled 1000s of miles to get screamed at and told to do things for training no civilian ever does. This is not a delightful experience. But they sign up and do it.
Most are around jet engines or gunfire (even just for training) at this early age and their ears are permanently damaged, even if they do not realize it. Tinnitus (a constant ringing in the ears) exists in about 10-15% of the general population. It is 53% among veterans, and this is for life.
Suicide in the general population killed 48K people in a recent year. That is a given rate per adult population (I believe it starts age 10). The veteran rate is 50% higher than this, and for women vets it is 2.5X higher than females in the general population (men suicide far more often than women).
These are real numbers. This is not some imagined misery in lives of guys (and ladies) who raised their right hands and took an oath. When they did that, they signed up for a life of tinnitus and risk of suicide, whether they knew it or not.
This week another stat emerged. Were the US to enter a major war, over 50% of the US population said they would not enter the military, and this extended to a major war on US territory. Over 1/2 of the US population would not fight.
I hope they remember that when they see guys and ladies who were not among them and did join. It’s the only reason they can kick back and say no.
I’m so glad to see the pushback here re: veteran victim hood. While I am in no way minimizing the impact on many of our fellow servicemembers there is seldom, if any, mention of the positive lifelong impact veterans are known for in business circles. Veterans bring leadership, organizational and motivational skills and technical know-how to the table unlike Masters Degree holders fresh out of college. Veterans skills are skills learned first hand by doing them, not by reading about them. So today let’s be proud of who we are and what we did. Don’t let others define us or our sacrifices.
Decades ago Vietnam vets were shown to be better off than their non-vet age group measured by home ownership, intact marriages, education, etc, which made sense since vets are vetted and all meet certain basic standards in physical health, education, mental stability, and mental health while civilians run the full gamut, so it wasn’t surprising that the smaller vetted group was on average higher quality people.
For decades now the push has been to portray those who join the military as victims, a class of people who will never recover from what serving your country and being patriotic does to you, losers, broken and mentally ill, homeless losers, empty hulls of the suckers who believed in toxic masculinity, and being warriors for the old outdated idea of serving America in uniform.
Veterans made this country great, we used to number in the tens of millions, I remember posting veteran populations of 24 and 25 million on freerepublic, we played golf on the moon, built the most advanced country on earth and were its most dynamic, driven, and productive part of its population.
The fewer veterans become, the more sympathetically vicious the neurotic, feminized public opinion makers become in portraying them and their willingness to serve as negatives, as a sure road to a dark and troubled future trapped within their traumatized inner selves as victims of the flag and their outdated visions of American manhood.
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