Veteran

Veteran

By Charles E. Kraus

You can be a veteran of various branches of the armed services, front line, support personnel, an enlisted person, officer, serving during peacetime or while the country is at war.  The record reflecting most of my four-year hitch in the Navy has me down almost exclusively as performing 'sea duty' (as opposed to serving on land), but that was only because being attached to a Construction Battalion in Vietnam, wearing fatigues and totting an M16, counted as Sea Duty even though it took place in and around DaNang.   

My dad's Merchant Marine cruises during the Second World War, traveling dangerous sea routes on a ship so ill equipped that instead of actual guns, it had wooden decoys designed, from a distance, to fool enemy patrols into thinking the vessel could return fire, weren’t even considered military activities, though they were more dangerous than any I performed during my enlistment.

There are common threads to being a vet.  You have to leave home and move into the military world.  It’s kind of fraternal.  A bunch of strangers are required to train together, people from an assortment of backgrounds, ethnicities, sections of the country, with a variety of regional accents and preferences, suddenly turned into a unit forced to perform as designated by a higher power -- a company commander or a drill instructor.  These troops are asked to move from comfort zone to war zone, to stow prejudices and act with equanimity.  They learn to inform every thought with a context that asks if what they are about to do is good for the cohort.  Also, to “appreciate” or at least yield to authority — to understand the consequences of uncooperative behavior.

Eventually an authentic bonding occurs within rank.  It is said that familiarity breeds contempt.  It can also breed respect and acceptance.  When you eat, sleep and work together, you discovery that the winners and losers aren’t determined by stereotype. Turns out, the people you depend upon come from ghettos, from upscale white parts of town, from a variety of religious and secular backgrounds.  They have all kinds of accents, odd (by your own standards) assumptions and belief systems, codes of honor, even different ways to broach a subject or walk down the street. 

You march together, working in a manner that is proscribed.  You wear the same outfits, and though a smidgen of attitude can be expressed in the tilt of a hat, by and large, you and those with whom you service begin to mirror one another.

While serving, you become a veteran of more than potential danger, more than the often rude awakening brought on by separation from home, from challenges to your assumed wisdoms and preconceptions.  You become a recipient, a veteran if you will, of an expanded, more inclusive, perspective. 

Vets are many things. Perhaps a little more macho than the rest of the population.  Perhaps more inclined to see the world through a government issued point of view.  More than this, most are apt to judge people by the individual talents, skills, and deportment they bring to the scene.