About being a veteran..Service is:

[cliffordu]

Taking an oath to defend the Republic from all enemies, foreign and domestic. And maybe understanding for the first time what that means.

Being screamed at by a dickhead in a Smokey the Bear hat for 8 weeks.

Overcoming the redline urge to get up and run while crawling under live machine gun fire in basic training.

Sharing coffee with a nameless Captain while on guard duty in a frozen 3 am watch. Just two soldiers keeping watch. Keeping faith. No rank, just Duty.

Shit food and bad coffee and boredom.

Boredom that is beyond all reason, beyond human endurance. Hurry up and wait. Hurry up and wait. For days, maybe for weeks.

(That's REALLY what we should be given awards for. Enduring endless waiting and standing in line).

Kitchen Police.....Wash 10,000 dishes in a couple of hours and then go do some pushups while that fucking guy in the hat yells some more.....

Travel Orders. More hurry up and wait.


**************

The shock through your heart and soul when you read the obit of your best friend from Basic training in the Stars and Stripes.

The smell of Cordite.

The smell of blood and human waste spilled into daylight

The smell of fear. Of terror. Of hatred beyond all human imagining

A silent prayer for Mother or Jesus or Someone to lift you from This.

Exhaustion that kills part of you.

Of realizing: Everything you thought you knew until now is wrong.

Of coming home:

The smell of soap and perfume on a slim, tanned stewardess, of her smile and clear blue eyes.

The miracle of the rustle of nylon against cotton as she walks the length of the plane.

Then, finally -

The understanding that your friends have moved on - that they are in their second year of college or busy having their second child or second wife and you are still listening to music three years old.

That you are gone from them in very real and immeasurable ways, that you are not OF them in quite the same way in spite of your best efforts.

In spite of their best efforts.


Service is just what it is, then. You've served, and that is all anyone else really knows, all they can know.

The rest is left to movies, to novels, to myth and hindsight.

You've served, whether clerk typist or Seal team leader, you served.

Welcome home.

My service was NOT the stuff of heroes or Legends. Just service. Like grandpa, like Dad and my uncles.

Everyone did their service.

For all of you veterans out there, Cook, Clerk typist and Seal Team leader alike

Thank you.

Happy Veteran's day.


**************************

I await the day when we make no more veterans, when we are needed less than the Dinosaur, when we are needed less than anger.

When war is finally, finally over.

until then.....I'll hurry up and wait.

*****************

[ScreamingMeemie]

1. Okay...

...I have no Kleenex in the house.

Thank you for sharing this.

[cliffordu]

3. You are welcome.

:patriot:

[nadinbrzezinski]

2. AMEN

[IGoToDU]

4. THANK YOU

Moved me to tears...

[cliffordu]

5. ......

:patriot:

[The Straight Story]

6. K&R (nt)

[Hardrada]

7. Spells it all out. A+++

[cliffordu]

8. Thanks...

[grantcart]

9. This week I spent working at Fort Bliss at the Veterans Hospital

You know what really bugs me about all these Veterans?


Vietnam Vets, Grenada Vets, Korean Vets, Iraqi and Afghan Vets,


Vets in wheel chairs, vets hobbled, vets gray and bald and some young ones missing limbs.


You know what really bums me out about all these vets at the Veterans Hospital?


They are so god damned cheerful.


Every single one of them.


And you know that each of them carry demons and such but what do they do?


Just suck it up, put a brave face, find something to laugh at and cheer their buddy up.


Course sitting here in El Paso at the Canteen we all joined in laughing our asses off on three things;


1) Prince Herman and his wonderful charm with the ladies and the way that he charms with cute nick names.

2) Newt Gingrich trying to get himself back on the lecture circuit by bringing out a new charachter based on a mix between Mr. Wilson of Dennis the Menace and Jason of Friday the 13th.

3) Shit

give me a minute

Christ

it was on the tip of my tongue.

Yep all day long I was riffing on the three things that were upper most on my mind

and

fuck

it was just

there.

Oops.

[SoDesuKa]

10. Cheerful Veterans

You're wrong about cheerful veterans. One of the biggest problems the Veterans Administration has is getting despondent veterans to come in for treatment. In fact there's very little the VA can do for guys who know that nobody gives a shit about them. If civilians really cared about veterans, there would be an inquiry into why so many are committing suicide.

Smiling faces, free meals at Applebees, vets proudly marching in parades, etc. are to keep civilans happy. And civilians know whatever they know from watching war movies. It's bullshit.



Never spent a day in the military.

[grantcart]

11. go spend a day at a vets hospital and report back

Loma Linda, San Diego, Camp Pendleton, Fort Bliss


Of course it is obvious that many are supressing demons, as I said.


Nevertheless when they have a chance to connect with each other they obviously enjoy the comraderie that gives a respite to what's going on.

[SoDesuKa]

12. I've Spent Many Days at the VA Hospital

Please don't tell me to "report back" to you, I don't even know who you are. I do know this. However many veterans are served by the VA Health Care system, a large number are not helped at all. The number of vets who commit suicide - 18 a day - does not include druggies, drunks, and other sick individuals who engage in morbidly high-risk behaviors.

Happy talk about smiling faces at Loma Linda, Camp Pendleton or Fort Bliss doesn't address the lived experience of many veterans. You're looking at only part of the picture, the one that makes America's dysfunctional relationship with veterans look acceptable.

[cliffordu]

13. I have morbidly high risk behaviors

"enthusiasms"

I'm happy as shit.

The acronym YMMV may be in order here -

Grantcart was merely relaying his experience.

Yours is different and

mine is a combination of the two.


And your 18 a day figure includes those high risk individuals, so let's stop with the bloviation.

[SoDesuKa]

21. Double Counting

I've taken the 18 a day figure at face value, not knowing how it is compiled. What sorts of high risk behaviors are included?

[cliffordu]

22. mental illness, booze, psych meds

bicycling on the open road, consorting with women half my age

malingering.

and an association with grantcart....

which could be the most dangerous thing of all....

[SoDesuKa]

25. Double Counting

You said that 18 suicides a day includes deaths from high risk behavior. Where are you getting your statistics from?

[cliffordu]

26. Some years ago I wrote an article - never published

- I saw the VA stats.....and sometime recently ( in the last year...??) I read the stats again in some fucking official report.

IIRC 18 a day includes dangerous activities.



********

By 1985 more Vietnam Veterans died due to suicide, single car accidents and drug overdoses that were killed during the entire war.

[SoDesuKa]

29. Kitsch Holiday

Veterans Day has turned into a kitsch holiday, and it's disrespectful to America's veterans. This year I decided to squawk about it. However, I got a poor response even from people who understand what kitsch means. Many people don't, and they can't be helped.

[Ezlivin]

14. Lying paralyzed in a hospital bed at Tripler Army Medical Hospital, tears rolling down my cheeks

in laughter as two friends dressed in complete diving outfits, tanks and flippers, walk dripping wet up to my bed.

"We didn't have time to change," one of them said in a deadpan voice.

Or my wife, herself still in the Navy, bringing freshly made food so I wouldn't have to eat the hospital fare.

Or her dragging my bed over near the sink so she could wash the blood out of my hair.

Or her closing the curtain around us quietly, then stealing into bed to lay beside me.

I'm still married to that Navy veteran and we just passed our 33rd anniversary.

Here's to all the veterans out there and for all the things they did, big and small.

[Uncle Joe]

15. Happy Veterans Day.

I was in Parris Island for eleven weeks, that name sounds romantic, especially for a swamp smelling, sand-flea ridden armpit of a location for boot camp.

Our Drill Instructor was relieved of duty for making us do bends and thrusts on beds of thorns, when we didn't do too well in a marching contest with the other platoons.

I was fortunate during my enlistment, no war, no combat, although we did have another recruit shoot his own leg on the Rifle Range to get out of boot camp.

My term was good for me, I got to see a fair amount of the world, that I wouldn't have otherwise experienced and I almost got married in the Philippines; a most beautiful but poverty stricken nation; ruled by the dictator Marcos at the time.

I remember those tee-shirts; they used to sell in Olongapo City off Subic Bay titled "The Last Act of Defiance" with a mouse; shooting a bird at an eagle that was about to swoop down on it for the kill, in my youthful naivete it never occurred to me that the mouse was the Philippines with the Eagle being the U.S.

I was happy when they got rid of Marcos and his shoe loving wife.

I made some beautiful pictures on Mt. Fuji, Japan but it was a miserable place to be, bitter cold wind, snow up to your thighs, then mud, then volcanic dust, nothing green grew up there and we had a major crab outbreak, there was only two older women running a little hamburger place, but I still wouldn't trade the experience.

From a culinary standpoint it was a tie for the best dish between Mongolian Barbecue in Taiwan and Panzit Noodles in the Philippines.

Mt. Victoria overlooking Hong Kong was beautiful, we had French Bread, meat and wine after walking up the path about the time of New Years.

I have many memories from visiting other nations as well, too many to list here but the experience; dramatically changed my perspective of the world and people in general, I believe for the better.

Thanks for the thread, cliffordu.

[cliffordu]

16. Thanks

:patriot:

[Uncle Joe]

17. Likewise

:patriot:

Have a good weekend.:)

[cliffordu]

18. I'm 60 in two weeks/.

My 38 year old girlfriend will be here in three hours so I can cook her dinner and snuggle while watching a DVD.

My weekend will be stellar.

I hope yours is the same....

:hi:

[Uncle Joe]

19. Let me know how the movie turns out.

:hi:

[BOHICA12]

20. You are so right about that coffee.

Best stuff was the instant we made heating the water in the turbine exhaust of our M1 Tank (.50 cal can of course). The residual diesel taste made up for the weak a$$ blend.

[cherokeeprogressive]

23. Until then... we'll all hope there will be people like us who are willing to give ourselves to a

higher purpose.

I didn't carry a rifle through the jungle or ride in a jeep through the desert sands. My presence though, on an aircraft carrier in the Red Sea helped stop Quadaffi from mining shipping routes in the 80's

[cliffordu]

24. Did I K&R this???

Well, here it is!!

[pinboy3niner]

27. Forget it, Jake--it's just the mental illness, booze and psych meds

"I'll have what he's having."

:rofl:

:hug:

[cliffordu]

28. Make mine a double......