Posted on 11/10/2021 10:05:30 PM 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.
Seems to confuse vets with combat vets, but, whatever.
I’m a vet and I don’t live in a solitary world. And, I am not alone.
Thanks for posting this. I wish the author had used a different quote from a different movie other than Platoon or no quote at all. But he did and it is OK as the rest of the article has the ring as if he had been there and done that.
It has been a very long and often lonely 50 years and to those who stood the line, “Welcome Home Brother and Thank You for your service!”
Me too. I wasn’t in combat. I was just a submarine sailor in a busy piece of ocean. Those guys that locked and loaded are my brothers in arms. God Bless them and our brothers that didn’t come home, and Those that did, with troubles. Never forget the family’s sacrifice for us. “Some gave all, all gave some. “. Those of us still here owe the debt.
Didn’t see combat, but being called to general quarters and hearing, this is not a drill with my battle station deep in the bowels loading the 5 54-inch guns, and not knowing what was going on was nerve racking. Russian ships were always shadowing us.
(served aboard a destroyer)
We also lost 3 shipmates. In boot camp, we had 3 suicides
I spent 400+ hours flying in the back of a cargo plane over Iraq as a slow fat target. This article rings true for me. The writer sounds like he’s got some experience.
http://arlingtoncemetery.net/bpbertrand.htm
The author served. That’s about all I know. He has a flare for dramatic writing, to be sure.
Ray Starmann was born in Chicago, Illinois on June 28, 1965, and grew up in Lake Forest, Illinois. Ray traces his original interest in writing to the CBS Radio Mystery Theater, which played nightly during the 1970's. The one hour drama series focused on crime, suspense, thriller and horror episodes. Ray served as an army intelligence officer for eight years. He was serving in Germany when the Berlin Wall fell and was an eyewitness to that event and the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe. In 1990-1991, Ray served in the Gulf War with the famed 7th Cavalry. Ray worked for Greystone Television as a treatment writer, actor, researcher and associate producer. In 2008, Ray and Sean King teamed up to write "Generation Gap", a Hallmark original movie starring Ed Asner and Rue McClanahan.
I’m not going to denigrate anyone’s time in uniform. Suffice it to say that not everyone faces traumatic circumstances in the military.
Thank you for your service.
I propose the following and have been supported by vets to be true. This isolation is a chosen characteristic that they are trained to take on. This chosen characteristic makes healing from experience more difficult. Propping up this chosen characteristic only harms the vets.
Having know several intel guys during the end of the 60s, it was not a fun job. Extremely stressful at times, like my own. One intel guy took me on a tour one evening of East Germany along the border. We were having a good time, drinking beer etc.
Then his radio called him to a Russian site where something had happened. I went along because he said it was a intercept site, so being in the business myself I was curious as to how the Russians did their work. (There was a mutual exchange agreement in place that allowed US intel people to inspect Russian sites as they could do ours).
When we got there, there was all sorts of Russian vehicles including a few tanks and APCs. As we walked up to the site where whatever had happened, we passed some really nasty looking, heavily armed, blood-stained troops stinking of cordite (Spetsnaz, it turned out). It got really bad fast. I still cannot shake what I saw. All the intercept guys were shot multiple times (to the point of separating body parts) for the ‘crime’ of listening to Western music ...
There was a constant drum beats of other events, working 4 km from several Russian Mechanized Armies on full alert, as we were. We had no guns, no ammo. Facing several 100k of troops and 35,000 tanks, whose first rest stop after passing the Fulda Gap was 60 km behind us. Nukes or not. 72 hours to the English Channel.
So of course, one Christmas Eve we called up one Russian net on a ‘secure’ channel and wished them Merry Christmas in Russian. They were not pleased.
Were you in Nam or see service during that period?
No. But conversed with some that have. Their still people.
All vets are not the same. I had it easy. Air Force. Planes were nowhere near any action. They had to be protected. I took advantage of every opportunity the military offered. Travel/education. It’s behind me now and no one owes me anything. Homeless vets need to be vetted to see if what conditions they served under. Some were unstable when they entered and the experience just made them worse. Every DD Form 214 shows where they served. The 180 VA hospitals should be made private as well as most of the programs I don’t need. 25 million vets out there. 90% are self sufficient. It should not be our ‘starving-child’ guilt trip the left uses.
Its not something I'd wish on anyone and, certainly not your misguided thought quoted here :
This isolation is a chosen characteristic that they are trained to take on. This chosen characteristic makes healing from experience more difficult. Propping up this chosen characteristic only harms the vets.
There is no 'healing', only learning to live and deal with it.
The flaw in your argument against me is the same is the same flaw used in the vet lonely victim argument and it has two aspects to it. It is possible to have an insight into their experiences and not have the same exact experience and you don’t need to have the same experience to be able to help them.
The flawed argument eliminates possible sources of help to the vets.
The flaw in your argument against me is the same is the same flaw used in the vet lonely victim argument ... etc ...
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Just stick it where the sun don’t shine, thank you for nothing. Pompous people like you make me almost regret serving our country, except for all the others.
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