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Well. It's more about how I feel rather than what really is on that one.
I come from a long line of people that wore a uniform, and in one case didn't have a uniform because there wasn't one at the time.
Only in one war was there no-one in my family involved, and that's because no-one was old enough. Or they were doing something that got them exempted or such..

The family history is full of peole who told kings to p*ss off and fought for this country and too often died for it.
So I've got this in the back of my head. Filed away in the black hole I call a brain.
Like my grandfather who got a concussion in combat, got some R&R.. knocked himself out during R&R, and said "Heck, combat's safer. Send me back to the front!" (He also was in the OP one night when a German came up on him in the dark saying, "Joe, are you there? Joe?" The guy jumped into the foxhole and my grandfather gave him a gift. He gave him his knife. When asked if the guy said anything about that my grandfather said, "Yeah. He said auuuuuuuugh.")

I can't quite put my finger o it, but it's how I feel. I may be wrong, but it's how I feel about it. I tell people to talk to the guys who are still in, and who got out because they ets'd or discharged. (Like I said, i was pretty burned up because of my BC's actions towards me when my step-daughter died. I spoke with the Major about it and he understood what I was saying. So he basically let me go ING until I ETS'd. I owe him. But I can't think of how I might repay that big a debt. Except maybe by somehow making sure that the policies and people who contributed to the gutting of my old unit get booted. No, I'm not sure how.)

I don't know really what to do about it. (And I don't know hoow to explain my feelings adequately about me being called a veteran.)

Well, I consider you a Veteran. You'll just have to live with it I guess. Unfortunately, there are bad Officiers and bad NCO's, they usually get weeded out in time but not always. I'll admit I wasn't a great NCO, I cared about my men but always got in trouble for "doing" the work rather than "supervising". If my squad had a job to do, I helped when I could, the work didn't bother me, it sure bothered the the Platoon NCO's though. Guess I just wasn't cut out to be an NCO.

I think I can understand, and I am not a veteran at all. But I do know that even the guys who came back from Vietnam alive often felt guilt about having survived. I have heard guys say that they were not in the heart of the battle so they didn't deserve the honor that some deserved. I think it is the same thing....some sort of guilt for not having faced the things others had to face. You were safe drinking beer in Germany and probably feeling somewhat guilty or inadequate because other guys were out there facing real horrors and trauma. But even the guy who sits holding the dying body of a buddy in his arms might feel that same sort of guilt because they didn't see the very worst of it. I think I understand what you are saying and I am sure it is valid because so many people seem to feel that way. My uncle even said something similar about landing on Omaha Beach on D-Day. He made it. Others all around him didn't. But he has horrible guilt about having traded duty with a guy who wound up getting blown to bits. He still believes the guy's wife would be really upset with him for having traded duty that day. Survivor's guilt. It's very sad.