We celebrated Memorial Day this year on the 25th of May. But Veterans Day is still ahead of us. Veterans Day always falls on November 11th of each year, whatever day of the week it may be. This year it falls on a Wednesday.
What’s the difference?
While Memorial Day is the day we specifically remember and honor those who DIED in service to our country (particularly those who died in battle), Veterans Day is the day we honor ALL military veterans, a special time to show our appreciation for any and all LIVING veterans.
It is important to realize that our living veterans have also sacrificed their lives for this country; perhaps not unto death, but their personal and family sacrifices can be as real and palpable as were those who have died. This point is often overlooked. Indeed, for some surviving Vets, life can have become a kind of living-death, uglier than death itself. Consider the many Vets who commit suicide back home, after having returned from active duty in war.
What is war like? We civilians have no idea. We can’t. How could we? It is something that has to be personally and directly experienced up-front and first-hand, to really “get-it.” And we can’t just walk up to a veteran and say, “Tell me what war is like? What did you do over there? Did you actually kill people? How did it feel?”
We civilians also have no clue as to what we really expect from our veterans. For example, a young man (teen?) enlists in the army. Civilians that we are, what do we assume will happen to this young man during basic training? Do we realize that he is literally being trained to become a killing machine? And in the face of real battle, actual war, what happens to him inside? Do we really understand what this means to his psyche, his soul, his spirit, how it affects the core of his inner being? His family lovingly sends off a once open, happy-go-lucky, life-enjoying kind of kid, only to have him return dark, sullen, taciturn, angry and closed-off to everyone he once held dear to his heart. In short, how is it that we civilians actually expect that such a young man is to return from war and enter back into civilian life, picking up where he left off, unchanged for the worse? What are we thinking?!
We civilians don’t understand and we don’t know. And because of this, there are many, many veterans living among us who are in deep pain and are suffering severe mental and emotional anguish while they can’t trust us or believe in us enough to share their pain and turmoil and hurt with us. Why? For one, we offend, though not intentionally. We are too shallow and insensitive in our thinking or in our behavior or expectations of them, or in our assumptions about war and what we think it’s like to participate in war. They see this in us and thus close themselves off to us. They know that we just don’t get it and perhaps never will.
Consider the simple act (however good intentioned it may be) of a civilian thanking a military Vet who has seen live action while serving. Might it not come across as shallow and somewhat out of touch? Why? First of all, we civilians are really clueless as to what it is that they have really done, experienced, and participated in, and we have no idea as to what motivated them to enter the military in the first place. Our light hearted and perhaps even naïve thank-you may actually represent the selfish ease with which our nation now uses and expends a volunteer army while the rest of us go about our business.
In such a context, what does it really mean to be patriotic while only a volunteer force shares the real burden of securing the safety of a whole nation and its people? Is saying a mere “Thank you” really adequate in the face of those who put their lives on the line for the rest of us? One military Vet commented that such a “thanks” feels self-serving for the civilian; it suggests that the “thanker” somehow really understands the sacrifice that was made and the resulting mental anguish, night terrors, and feelings of loss and bewilderment that a war-torn veteran may feel and experience daily: “I pulled the trigger,” he said, “you didn’t. Don’t take that away from me.” One has to wonder. If we still had the draft, where all able young men/women between the ages of 18 and 25 must enlist in the military, would we so readily support military strikes and engage in all-out war, as we seem to so easily do now?
We seem to forget that war has an undeniable impact on all survivors, not just those who were killed in action. It traumatizes. There is mental, emotional, and psychological impact leading to things like stuffed inner rage, anger and/or shame for having survived coupled with a loss of faith and a kind of spiritual desolation. There can be excruciatingly painful memories leading to cycles of violence and extreme distrust of one’s surroundings. Loss of sleep, unpredictability, and self-destructive behavior are also symptoms. Again, we civilians are often left clueless. This is why a veteran’s re-integration into civilian life can be so difficult and sometimes seem to never actually take place.
Veterans Day is a day to honor all veterans. Perhaps it should also be a time to really consider what war really is and what it does to all its participants. Perhaps it is a time to take a serious look at the pros and cons of entering into war and to consider why a nation should see war only as a very, very last resort, only after absolutely every possible means to international diplomacy has been exhausted and every avenue of conciliatory terms has been tried, so as to avoid a “Declaration of War”—especially since we now only use a volunteer army. With such an army, it is all too easy for the rest of us civilians to gung-ho support war (“We support our troops!), knowing that any particular son or daughter or grandchild can escape its effects simply by not volunteering. In such a context we can have our cake and eat it too (or so we think)—support our troops AND keep our own child out of harms way. How easy is that!
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