Thoughts Regarding Veterans on Their Day

 

by Pa Rock 

Veteran

Today is Veteran's Day.  It is one of those rare federal government holidays that is attached to a specific date - November 11th - and therefore does not automatically fall on a Monday, but this year it does.  I need to remember not to bother checking the mail today.

November 11th is the old "Armistice Day," or the date on which World War I officially ended - on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918.

I am what is called a "non-combat" veteran, a person who wore his country's uniform (for four long years!), but because the Vietnam War was winding down when I went into the service in April of 1971 with an ROTC commission, I never had to go to the hellhole that was Nam.   Even without the constant danger of getting killed, maimed, infected, or addicted in a rotting jungle thousands of miles from home, I still found my time in uniform to be generally demoralizing.  At one point during my service I was putting in such long hours training troops for combat roles that they would hopefully never have to fulfill, that I had time to smoke four packs of cigarettes a day in a culture that encouraged consuming alcohol in excess.

The military did afford me and my very young family an opportunity to travel.  My oldest son was born at no cost in a military hospital on the island of Okinawa, Japan.  After the military experience was over, my spouse and I each received multiple college degrees thanks to the then generous GI Bill program.  Those benefits lasted forty-eight months, and we made the absolute most of them.  The Veteran's Administration also helped many young people just starting out in life with home and small business loans.

I rejoined the military, in a manner of speaking, later in life when I was in my early fifties and accepted a position as a civilian social worker with the military.  My first duty station was with the Army at Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas, and not long after that I was transferred to Ft. Campbell, Kentucky, another army base.  Luke Air Force  Base near Phoenix, Arizona, was next, followed by two years at Kadena Air Base on Okinawa, and then back to Luke.  I retired to the Ozarks following my second stint in the hot sands of central Arizona.

My years as a civilian working with the military were more productive and personally rewarding than the years in which I served in uniform, but that is not to say that they came without a cost.  As a professionally licensed clinical social worker, much of my time was spent counseling young men and women whose lives had been impacted by their involvement with the oil wars in the Middle East.   The amount of emotional harm that can befall an individual or a young family when one member is removed from the home and placed in a combat role for a year or more can be staggering.  I still hear from some of the troops that I worked with more than a decade ago, and many of them continue to struggle to regain control of their lives - and that is not hyperbole!

In Phoenix ten years ago we still had homeless veterans who were sleeping on the streets.  God damn a country that lets that happen.  Just wearing the uniform leaves a mark on your soul, and serving in combat can eat your soul.  A bed, a roof overhead, and good medical care is cheap compensation for what our veterans have given.

(Thank you to the West Plains High School which has a nice program honoring veterans every year, the community of West Plains which hosts an annual Veteran's Day Parade, and the local Arby's which is giving away free roast beef sandwiches to veterans today.  Salute!)