I’m sad to report that from my experiences and research, there seems to be a schism developing between the new generation of veterans and the older guys. As with any kind of social research, the reasons for this are not a hard science. However, I think I can understand why this may be occurring.
It upsets me that this may be the case, especially since I think that, in particular, the Vietnam guys deserve much of the praise and thanks for the sea change in how we as a nation treat our veterans today. When they returned from war, people spit on them and chastised their service; now, the words “veteran” or “just-returned-home” elicit clapping and handshakes and adulation. (Just last week, my friend, who is graduating from college ,received special recognition for being a student veteran – the audience of all civilians raucously cheered.)
The first hint I received of this possible divide occurred shortly after my second tour ended. I stayed on active duty and worked the 2004 Toys for Tots campaign. One such event took me to a Veterans of Foreign Wars Post in D.C. There were almost no veterans of my age who had become members. The post commander tried very hard to get me to join. I got the sense that he didn’t just want me -- it was that he needed me to become a member. Someone said, “If you new guys don’t join, our organization will just fade away.” But, this was still early in the wars, so it made sense to me that no younger vets had sought to join yet.
Well, I never wound up joining and all of my other veteran friends never did either. The Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America established dominance for having the most number of members from the new wars, and they set about landmark legislation that endeared them to hundreds of thousands of veterans of the Global War on Terror. Unfortunately, this only split the relationships between the young and old groups even more. The IAVA legislative upgrades to the GI Bill are specifically for the veterans who served on active duty after September 11, 2001. Upgrades in veteran’s benefits such as this one, no doubt anger some of the older guys – why shouldn’t they get these benefits too?
On the medical side of veteran’s benefits, the treatment is somewhat skewed to the younger guys also. Some veterans of the older conflicts still struggle with the VA bureaucracy. When a new veteran comes home however, they are considered “the highest priority” by the VA medical healthcare system, possibly building even more resentment.
The Veterans of Foreign Wars is the only major organization I could find that has camaraderie for bringing together “war-fighters of all generations” in their mission statement, yet, they are failing in that goal.
When researching this blog, I called dozens of VFW posts and other contacts within their organization, and (even though I told them I was young veteran myself, looking to explore the relationships between older vets and the new guys) they were mostly inhospitable. One man answered my introduction with this quickly delivered statement: “I don’t really know what we have to offer. The majority of the young guys are out beating their heads against the wall trying to get ahead everyday, and taking care of their families and s***, and they don’t have the time to hang out with a bunch of old f***ers.” I add this experience to the time I was out at a VFW post in Pittsburgh for a wedding. I asked to use their bathroom while helping set up the reception hall and they seemed very upset to let me in the club area to urinate. “I’m a veteran too,” I said to the bartender and the couple guys sitting at the bar. No one cared.
At the larger level of nationwide organizations and legislative matters, there definitely seems to be a separation between the older vets and the younger vets developing. Maybe it’s nothing I’ve described here. Maybe it’s just that, despite the shared hardships of all veterans, the wars are different and too much time had passed between major wars to bring those people together. (I don’t mean to leave out here the Gulf War Vets, or the Grenada Vets, or the Lebanon or Somalia or any other small war veterans here, but the only wars on the same length and intensity of Vietnam since that war ended, are the Iraq and Afghanistan theaters of operations of today). Maybe it is just that young people today (including young veterans) have too much to do to put much participation into anything (especially, anything involving people their parent’s age). Maybe it’s just that, for my generation, the wars aren’t even over yet so there is no closure.
Despite what I’ve reported on, I am inspired by what I’ve experienced on the individual level and what you can see. In the famous photo of the “Marlboro Marine” fighting in Fallujah, Iraq, you can observe the portrait of a man who went on to develop PTSD. He’s back home now and still struggling, but some of his only friends are Vietnam veterans who, in an interview with Rolling Stone said, “They won’t let him turn out like they did.”
As the progress for the plight of veterans proceeds at a positive pace, it makes sense that those who are fighting today will become the focus. I think it would be great if my generation would be the last generation of veterans that our nation produces, but I’m not that big of dreamer. I know that will not be the case. Today, I am just happy to help out any veteran in any way I can. Someday, I hope my struggles will have become a lesson for some young kid returning his rifle to the armory and checking out for the civilian world. I will hope that his challenges are easier than mine. This is what each generation of warriors will always do for the next.
Connect with Dario online:
Personal Website (Free Writing, Podcast, Dario in the Media, Biography, Books, Blogs)
20 Something Magazine (Editor-in-Chief, Creator)
JMWW Literary Journal (Senior Nonfiction Editor)
The Veterans Writing Project (Instructor, Nonfiction Editor)
LinkedIn (Professional Stuff)
Facebook (Be my friend?)
No comments:
Post a Comment