A reflection on veterans

OPINION // OPEN FORUM  San Francisco Chronicle & The Oregonian 

A reflection on veterans

By Charles E. Kraus 

Every once in a Veterans Day, I write a piece about the years I spent in the military and how they’ve affected my life beyond the time I was required to salute anything that moved. Not many of my high school and college friends found their way into uniform. I’ve always been happy that I did.

I’m not saying I am “proud” or “honored” to have served or that I was particularly civic minded. Mine was the Vietnam War era. I was restless. Conflicted. Also curious. The official record describes my four-year hitch in the U.S. Navy as “sea duty,” but that was only because being attached to a construction battalion in a war zone, wearing fatigues and toting an M-16 rifle counted as sea duty even though it took place on solid ground.

Hopefully, I did some good for our country. But to be quite honest, the America I thought I was defending didn’t look like the one we are living in today. Though there were huge demonstrations throughout the Vietnam era, everyone assumed they took place within a context, within a system of laws and procedures. The system can no longer be taken for granted.

Back then (and right now), America was experiencing civic turmoil. In the 1960s, the kids were messed up. Today, I’d give that distinction to the adults. Is this the place I risked my life to defend?

There are common threads to serving: You have to leave home and move into the military world. It’s kind of fraternal. A bunch of strangers 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 that performs in a singular fashion. Inductees leave their comfort zones, stow prejudices and act with equanimity, informing every thought with a context that asks if what they are about to do is good for the cohort. Initially, it’s a game. Reluctant acquiescence, then a going through the motions.

Eventually, an authentic bonding occurs within ranks. Though I’m sure familiarity can breed contempt, it can also breed respect and acceptance.

When you eat, sleep and work together, encountering an assortment of unique individuals, you discover that the winners and losers cannot be determined by stereotype. As it turns out, the people you learn to 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, ridiculous (by your own standards) assumptions and belief systems, strange codes of honor, even different ways to broach a subject or walk down the street.

You march together. You work in a proscribed manner. 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 serve 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 wisdom and preconceptions. You become a veteran 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. Beyond that, most are apt to judge people by the individual talents, skills and deportment they bring to the scene.

Charles E. Kraus received a Bronze Star for his service in Vietnam and will remember all veterans on Sunday, Veterans Day. He lives and writes in Seattle.