A war. A Father and a son. Some guy in the grocery store

[1-Old-Man]

Fundamental change.

My father's luck in birth-dates was horrible. He was in his late teens when the Great Depression began and had to make his way into adulthood as it raged. And then he was still of age, though a bit old, when the Second World War hit. He was a Marine and he was part of the invasion force of every major beach landing in the Pacific. He was what is called a decorated war veteran. It was hard on him.

I was in the military too. I served in the Army and did three tours in Viet Nam. I too am a decorated war veteran.

You would never know my father was a veteran. You could hardly get him to even say it. I have never felt much compulsion to dwell on my war either. We only talked about our experience one time. I'll quote the entire discussion. I had not seen him in five years when I arrived at his house. I went in and we talked a bit. He said "How was it?". I said "It wasn't that bad". And then he said nothing. And that was it, our entire conversation.

This morning I had to stop at the grocery store and as I was walking out there was a fellow in front of me who was wearing a T-shirt that had printed on its back something like "Operation Iraqi Clusterfuck" "123rd MP Unit" and then some other bullshit. Nice shirt, bright colors. This guy was advertising his pride at having gone to war. He wanted the world to know where he had been, and implicitly what he had done.

And I was trying to imagine my father wearing a T-Shirt that said "Iwo Jima" or me to wear on that said "Dak To" and I just could not make the picture appear in my mind. My father was never proud of what he did and my service was nothing anyone would brag about either, both are better forgotten.

The country has fundamentally changed.

[kestrel91316]

1. My father served in the USAF 23 years and never, ever wore anything off duty that indicated any

military affiliation at all. Perhaps that was considered lowbrow for officers. But he never talked about his service much, either.

He flew reconnaissance out of Takhli Air Base in Thailand 1968-9. And no, he didn't have a t-shirt that said so.

[Snotcicles]

37. discretion is the better part of valour. nt

[SoCalDem]

2. It certainly has..

The draft ending changed the military for the worse. Military went from being service to country, shared by all whose age "qualified" them..., to soldier of fortune, braggadocio and bloodlust by far too many who choose military life.

Back then.. men went to war, got out ASAP and went on with their lives. (except for the relatively few who made a career of it)

[SoCalDem]

6. you have a nice day too

[hack89]

8. I feel much better, thank you. nt

[onethatcares]

3. my dad

was a radio operator on a PBY in the south pacific during WW2, he never talked about it with me.

Me, I was a freaking morning reports clerk in Alaska at the end of the VietNam war. I have nothing further to say.

[mwrguy]

4. I've seen lots of old guys in hats that say "Korean War Veteran' or "Vietnam Veteran" etc...

[OldRedneck]

22. Watch your mouth!!!

"old guys?" "OLD GUYS????"

Who are you calling OLD??

I'm a Vietnam vet and I'm not an "old guy."

Hmmm. Wait a minute. Let me check my birth certificate.

WHOA!!! That was a LONG time ago!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

That explains the gray hair in the mirror!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[loli phabay]

32. this, from tags on their vehicles to the hats, the old guys just wear different shows

Tshirts especially unit tshirts and especially wry humored unit tshirts have been the thing for a couple of decades at least. I dont think i have ever had a deployment where we did not get tshirts printed up to commemorate it, also a lot of the guys git commemorate tattoos. Not everyone feels the same way about their service.

[babylonsister]

7. Recommend, and thanks for

this. I know a few guys who never wanted or want to talk about their military experience.

[liberalhistorian]

9. My uncle, one of my dad's brothers,

served two tours as a marine in Vietnam. He returned physically fine and seemingly okay emotionally and psychologically, although my grandmother told of times when she would go to wake him up and he'd jump up and grab her by the throat while he was still asleep, and similar incidents. He married and raised a stable, well-adjusted family. He was still fun to be around. But he never, ever talked about it, not even to his wife, according to her, for at least ten years after his return. Even then, he had to be prodded. There were only two times I ever discussed it with him.

The first was when I was a senior in high school and writing a research paper on Vietnam veterans, their war experiences and how they differed from WWII experiences, and their re-integration into society (or not, as the case may be) and the issues involved; this was in 1983, about fourteen years after the end of his service. I wanted him to review the draft of the paper but was hesitant about asking him, as I'd never, ever talked about it with him or heard him even mention it. His wife, my aunt, asked him for me and he reluctantly agreed. He actually made corrections and gave some good suggestions.

The second time was ten years ago, when my then-twelve-year-old son and I were in D.C. and I'd taken him to see the Vietnam Memorial, which I'd already seen myself several times. Someone in the family had told him about it (probably my dad or my aunt) and when I saw him at the family Christmas gathering he actually asked me about it. I'd never brought it up with him before after the previous times I'd seen it. This time, he wanted to know everything about it. I showed him our pictures and, when he asked how people could find specific names, I told him about the system that had been set up to do so. I described reading the "book" of names and locations and how emotional it was to see a name, a birth-date, the date of arrival in country and then the KIA date. It all seemed so cut and dry and matter of fact, when each one was a real life, with a real family and friends and interests and hobbies and jobs and uniqueness and the birth-date had symbolized such life and promise.

He looked at me for a moment and then quietly asked "what did you expect them to do? Pretty it up with drawings of hearts and flowers? Just what did you think war was and is?" And he was absolutely correct. He'd always wanted to see the memorial and I'd thought it would be nice to take him one day to do so and thought we'd have plenty of time. After all, at that time, he wasn't quite even sixty years old yet. But he developed Alzheimer's in only his early sixties and is now institutionalized in the last stages of it, no longer recognizing anyone, not even his own wife and children (his deterioration happened rather quickly). We wonder if his war experiences and exposure to Agent Orange and other chemicals had anything to do with it. I guess we'll never know for sure. What's sad is that he is now re-living his Vietnam experiences and there are plenty of times when he wakes up thinking he is currently there.

Every other veteran I've ever known, from WWII to Korea to Vietnam, has been similarly close-mouthed, only mentioning it in (usually rather grudging) responses to questions asked of them. Some will wear a hat once in awhile, but not often. I may not have ever been a veteran or ever come close to anything remotely resembling their experiences (and I am a woman, after all), but I do totally understand such quietness and reluctance. The only thing I have to say about that, though, is that I think it's really important to get the soldier's side of things and their experiences and not just hear it from the top brass and top leadership.

[RadioFreekentucky]

10. Chicken Hawks

Never felt the need to speak of my service until I felt the need to distinguish myself from the Chicken Hawks who championed wars they had no intention of fighting themselves .

[trof]

11. Agree. It bugs me too.

It's kind of sad that evidently their proudest moment was serving in some war somewhere.
Or just in the military while there was a war going on.
I guess for many this was their 'finest hour'.
Something they did that was a part of something bigger than themselves.

Many (most?) left service to lead humdrum lives.
This was their one shot at 'glory'.

No, I don't wear a cap that proclaims "VIET NAM VETERAN".
And I don't have or want the T shirt.

[zeemike]

13. My father was in WW1

He fought at the battle of Bellue Woods and was wounded there and almost died....I only found that out just before he died...he never talked about it and there is no doubt that every Marine that fought there was a hero by all accounts.
I had two brothers that fought in WW2...one in the Army and the other in the Merchant Marines and they never talked about or bragged about what they did.

The difference now is the All Volunteer military and the cult of heroes that Bush created around them starting with Poppy Bush...and I have seen the same things you have...people bragging about their service and expecting to be thanked for it.
Men used to go to war out of duty to country, now they go to war for the glory...which will lead us into disaster...IMO

[MADem]

27. Well, the drawdown is underway. A lot of those

folks will be looking for work in the next few years.

You should try to get your father's service documents--there was a massive fire in St. Louis where they held the records, but they did try to reconstruct some of them. Although wait--that fire took out mostly Army records, so your dad's stuff might still be available.

I think it's important for people to know what their ancestors did. It would be a valuable bit of knowledge to pass on to the next generation.

I have an uncle who got a silver star in WW1, another who got the bronze star in WW2. We found out they had received these awards when they lay in their coffins with their medals on their chest.

People didn't brag back in the day. The WW2 uncle used to joke about his shrapnel, but the truth of the matter was it took him almost two years to get out of hospital after the war and it was a miracle he survived and lived to nearly 90.

[zeemike]

28. Actually I have found a lot of his records.

Or rather another member of the family did and they shared them with us.
My older brother family has much of his artifacts like his purple heart and the piece of shrapnel that went through his chest and lodged in his arm...and believe it or not my older brother had his 1903 Springfield rifle he carried in WW1...he had used it as a hunting rifle for all of his life.
And I found out most of what I know after he had died...he never bragged about it...never mentioned it really.

[MADem]

30. You should be able to find out, from his record, how he got the purple heart if you don't already

have that information.

If he has any other personal awards, you'll learn "what he did in the war" as well. There may be a "unit history" somewhere that will give you some information too. He was in an historic place at an historic time, certainly.

I think our loved ones stay alive in our hearts so long as we remember them and speak of them.

[zeemike]

31. Yes I found out a lot about what he did in the war.

And how he was wounded in Belue Woods...in fact he was one of few men in his company to survive.
And he had some keepsakes in a trunk that my brothers family now have...including a book of his divisions action...and a few pictures of him in Paris...no doubt taken at a photo studio there.

I got interested in it enough to do some research on my ancestry and found lots of interesting things about where I came from...I recommend it to anyone.

[MADem]

33. That's great that you have all that! I agree about research,

amazing the things you can learn!

[Omnith]

43. The battle of Bellue Woods, I believe that was the battle that earned the

nickname for the Marines of "Devil Dogs" by the Germans, and it stuck.

[MisterP]

14. the neocons since 1975/8 declared that we'd gone soft and were letting Moscow take over everything

they lied constantly to overcome Vietnam's blatant failure, undermined the Constitution, and backed a violent, ultraconservative Sunni Islamism against Moscow: no stoop was too low to defeat The Great Enemy (this was incubated as Carter turned to the right 1979-80 as Iran and Nicaragua didn't go 100% the way the new Best and Brightest thought it should)
we whiffle around 1994-99, poking at Haiti and Bosnia and then more intensely in Kosovo and Iraq (the blood we shed in inverse proportion to how much good we end up doing)
then 9-11 Changed Everything by letting the neocons pass the laws they'd pre-prepared (again while a Dem Prez drifted to the right) and launch the war they'd pre-planned since the Gulf War
we bombed Libya for Qatar and and now are openly arming what appear to be cannibal hordes a few countries over
and then you got Ergenekon running around ever since they shot the Pope...

[BillyRibs]

16. My Father Served

From 38 to 46, Never said to words about his experience.

[nolabear]

17. My father was supposedly in Thailand during the Vietnam war.

Then he got multiple cancers and it turned out he'd been, at least at some point, massively exposed to Agent Orange. My stepmother says he intimated that things were not as we'd thought but he never said word one.

These days people talk to one another more and more. I don't think it's a bad thing. It can be disturbing, but I've seen too many vets whose feelings and experiences never were given enough light and air to keep them from being just toxic.

I know nothing about that shirt, but it sounds like a complaint to me.

[usGovOwesUs3Trillion]

18. Thanks for sharing

I come from a long line of family who served, me xUSN, and I blame the M$M for making all our wars today a cleaned up, totally fucking antiseptic teeVee game. (Yeah, I know they are just doing the elite's bidding now, and that includes gov)

Makes me sick.

At least in Vietnam they had some real reporters in the thick of things, and they showed a whole lot more (not all of it by any means close) on the teeVee than they do today.

If they did, all this mass murder would not be allowed to continue, imho.

[sufrommich]

19. Really a brilliant OP. My dad was a marine

during the Korean war and would agree with everything you've said.

[Moostache]

20. Things changed under Reagan...what was real became fake and vice versa.

I remember the initial movies about the Vietnam War, the ones like Coming Home, Deer Hunter and Apocalypse Now in the mid- to late-70's...dark, brooding films that made a point of portraying the way the war impacted people, affected them, changed them and their families. These were unrelenting looks at what consequences war can lead to - broken bodies, broken spirits, broken families and towns. They did not sugar coat things or try to make our misadventures in Southeast Asia seem like a victory lap of the region.

This was none too popular with the people who are today's raging "I love 'murica" hyper/pseudo-patriots or yesteryear's Reagan fanatics. They did not like the idea of possibly learning something from a mistake or a miscalculation or a misapplication of military power..."we are AMERICA!!!", in their eyes and to this day, we never apologize, for anything, to anyone, EVER.

They remember a different time of reflection on Vietnam and a different kind of veteran - John Rambo, and not the one from "First Blood" - the very excellent book and largely forgettable movie, but the utterly bastardized one from the Stallone propaganda sequels to a story that originally ended with the Vietnam Vet dying in a stand-off with police. Chuck Norris' POW rescue films were also spawned from this fantasy-version of Vietnam and its aftermath.

We were transformed from a shattered and questioning nation into a steroid-fueled, cocky, arrogant, "Fuck Yeah!" idiot farm. We went from a nation capable of introspection and growth to a raging adolescent with hormonal highs and delusional images of immortality and super-powers. I wish it weren't so, but it is and it has been for a very long time now. Anyone who dares to write or reflect the less than stellar aspects of America circa 2013 is immediately suspect, and dismissed as "fringe"....irrespective of political affiliation - and I do not mean the bloodless fringe zealots or right or left, I mean the people who dare to try to influence others in reasonable ways or to see things differently.

9/11 never had even a brief moment of introspection. We were invading Afghanistan within 4 weeks and have been at "war" ever since. We had lies and epic abuses of power and yet no war crimes, no trials, no consequences...later we have had massive financial fraud and theft and the near collapse of the global economy and yet....no consequences, no trials, no reflection.

America has not changed, America has lost its very soul and is currently a husk of a nation being fed on by vultures and scavengers who could care less and really are only concerned with how much profit they can squeeze out of the death throes. We are, we are...a waste of a nation (all apologies to P.O.D. and to those who can't make that particular connection)...

[nadinbrzezinski]

26. Forget the 1970s

Go rent one day, "Go Tell the Spartans."

[antigone382]

21. My brother was in Afghanistan and Iraq...

...his company lost three men in a bombing in Haditha. I once saw a very understated bracelet on his wrist with their names on it (I knew their names because I first heard about the incident in the news and I had no way of knowing if it was him or not...and after that I just made it my business to know a little about who they were), and I made the mistake of mentioning it to him, which clearly made him pretty uncomfortable...other than that he has never really talked about his experiences or made a show of his veteran status that I have ever seen.

My brother is in many ways an anomaly, perhaps even out of another time in many respects...but he is one of our more recent veterans, at least as much so as the guy wearing the flashy T-shirt. There are a range of people in any generation, I'd say.

[randr]

23. Real Pride and Love for ones Country

has no political party or ego attached.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

24. You would be surprised as to how many chickenhawks are strutting around in costume.

[nadinbrzezinski]

25. My father was with the resistance in Poland

My husband is a vet of every major war in the last 20 years, save Bosnia...I have my nightmares from the War on Drugs in Mexico. Three different wars, three different countries...three very different rules of engagement. As a medic, we all agreed, I had the loosest screw.

Dad never sad a thing until he first opened to hubby, and then to me near his death... He was right, none of my brothers, my sis, or mom...would accept any of it, or get it. Though his nightmares diminished.

Hubby and I share what we experienced, especially with the young who have never been there...in that horrific place...you know it, no need. Neither of us will wear a navy vet, or anything like that. I know, like Don Quixote, we like to till at windmills.

We both have observed that the farther back you are from the front lines, the likelier people are going to talk of honor, glory, the honored death and announce what they've done...with great fanfare. There are exceptions of course, but that has been my observation.

Of course, your mileage will vary.

[gordianot]

29. They really never talk about it. My Uncle finally told his children I insisted.

During World War II he was allowed to take an 8mm camera on several bombing missions by his squadron commander (who was a famous Hollywood figure) who wanted and got a copy. It was his second tour (out of 3) in the bombers and was allowed some freedom. I saw the movies a couple times they included the Polesti oil field raid. By far the most incredible thing I ever saw on film. About 10 years ago I asked if he gave the movies to his kids who had no idea. He responded I should and finally spoke about what he experienced. They learned about all his medals he actually wanted to talk about it, we contacted a historian. Stephen Ambrose passed away 2 months before his scheduled interview. After reading his war record said it was the most incredible record he had ever encountered. My Uncle's kids said he did much better after he talked to them.

The one quote I remember clearest from my Uncle was "War is just a way for old men to kill young men who do not know better". About a week before the surrender of Germany several German planes buzzed a forward liaison airfield where he was stationed. No one shot at them, no fighters met them, they did touch and go landings. I quote "they just wanted to have fun, we knew it, they deserved it".

[Raine]

34. My father in WWII, in the South Pacific, he would never ever talk

about it. One time when I a kid I asked him something about it and he was vague and unresponsive. My mother signaled for me to follow her into the other room and told me "don't ever ask him about any of that, don't ever bring it up". I never said anything again, never asked him anything and till the day he died he never talked about it.

[Are_grits_groceries]

35. My Daddy served in WWII.

He was in an artillery unit that landed D-Day+4. He was in through VE Day and beyond. He was in The Battle Of The Bulge and other major actions. Counting his training, he was in from 1941-1945.

He only would talk about one moment. A piece of shrapnel wounded him in the little finger, but he refused a Purple Heart. He said that his wound didn't merit one.

Beyond that, I never heard anything else. My Mama said he would jerk around in his sleep. All that artillery fire left him with that. I never saw him jump or react strongly when startled. I guess it was a nightmare problem.

He never wore a hat or had a bumper sticker that advertised his service.

[Sotf]

36. Great idea...

How about you deal with your service and your dad with his the way he likes...

The rest of us will deal with and discuss our service the way we like.

I'm sure that VFW WWII vet with the jackets, snazzy hat with a ton of pins is just "glorifying."

He has the right to feel proud and it is judgmental of you to look down your nose at those who don't feel the appropriate amount of shame just like you.

[bluedeathray]

38. Thank you for your service

Our country has changed in several fundamental and significant ways. The sacrifices made by past generations are, in some cases, not being honored as they justifiably should be.

War is hell.

[hobbit709]

39. My stepfather spent 18 months in Korea.

The only thing he ever said about it was that "It was as fucked up as Nam but at 40 below zero."

[tumtum]

40. 2 tours in Nam,

Operation Just Cause and Desert Shield/Desert Storm, I don't wear anything signifying my participation in those conflicts.
Although I do have a tee shirt I got in Saudi Arabia during Desert Shield/Desert Storm the says "Hard Rock Cafe, Iraq, closed due to heavy Desert Storm", but I don't wear it, it's more of a novelty item.

[ellie]

41. My uncle was in Merrill's Marauders and

he told me one thing:
At night when the tigers in the jungle would roar, the ground would shake.

[Omnith]

42. I agree completely