Since this is a family story and it would involve way too many "Dog" references I am going to bail on the talking dog bit for today. It will be back to amaze and annoy tomorrow.

It is Veterans day and I have been thinking about the Veterans I have known. We have an epic myth in this nation that all soldiers are heroes. There is this dysfunctional idea that somehow the service to ones country in uniform absolves the faults inherent in all people. To me this is a dangerous thing all the way around. It is not that those who serve willingly or otherwise in the military do not deserve a measure of respect for being willing to put themselves in harms way, they do. It is just the fetishization of service as a universal way of elevating people is harmful. By setting the expectations of veteran this high we nearly universally guarantee disappointment.

Originally posted at Squarestate.net

Military service does change those who serve, sometimes in good ways, other times in not so good ways. Since today is the day we honor the service of those in uniform, I thought I would share some of the experiences of my family in the military and what they have gained and lost from it.

Dad was a veteran. He became a soldier by outsmarting himself (which did not happen much in his life, but when you believe you are the smartest person you know, it is going to happen sometimes). In 1961 Dad was getting ready for his Junior year of college. He had joined the ROTC in order to get some scholarship money, but it was only a two year scholarship and that money had run out. Dad was sitting around drinking a beer with a friend complaining about how even though the money was gone, he still had to ware the uniform at his work and attend formations, all of which were fine as long as the Army was paying but felt like a burden now.

Between him and his friend they came up with what seemed like a good idea. Dad had corrective surgery on an extremely lazy right eye as a child. The two of them figured that if he went to Detroit and volunteered, the Army Doctors would take one look at his eye, classify him as 4F and send him home. Bingo! He would be out of ROTC free and clear!

So, the next day, with his books for the fall semester in the back of his car, he drove off to the induction center in Detroit. After filling out paperwork and seeing a couple of corpsmen who checked his blood pressure and heart rate, he was at the sight testing station. The corpsman ran his tests then said, “Go to that station and the man will check your hearing”.

Dad was shocked. He said “Whoa there. I had this operation on my right eye as a kid; you might want to look at that”. The corpsman took out a tool, looked in both of Dad’s eyes and then more closely at the right eye. “It looks like they did some nice work,” said the corpsman. He then took out a piece of paper and on it wrote, “Teach this man to shoot from the left”, paper clipped it to Dad’s file and sent him to have his hearing tested. Dad never even got to go home. He was put on a train to boot camp that night. He had to have someone come, get his car, and sell his books back to the bookstore.

In another ten weeks Dad was on the Korean peninsula. Still for all that he had outsmarted himself by volunteering, the experience in the Army changed the course of his life. He became a company clerk. This meant he was in charge of typing up all kinds of paper work. One of these paperwork duties was to type up the verdicts and punishments for minor infractions by members of his company. Law in the military is very different than law in civilian life. One thing he saw that he did not like was the fact that many of the verdicts were decided before the hearing ever happened.

Part of this is the difference in the two legal systems, but Dad did not like it. He felt that anyone accused of a crime should have a chance to be acquitted, not summarily punished. When he left the service, he knew he wanted to be an advocate for justice. It was this desire that lead him to the law and his lifetime of service to his community representing the little guy against powerful interests.

Not everyone’s time in the military brings good things. Uncle P. (I am using his initial to preserve his privacy) did not volunteer, he was drafted in 1967 and sent to Vietnam. Five months into his tour of duty P. stepped on a landmine. In a way he was very, very lucky. It was not a big mine and he had stepped past it, not directly on it. The mine exploded and ripped up the backs of his legs and his back.

Dad was law clerking at the Supreme Court at the time. He went into overdrive and talked to everyone he had ever met on the Hill and in the Court. 38 hours after stepping on that mine Uncle P. was in Walter Reed Hospital. He got the very best care available at that time, and recovered, physically. We now know that he also had PTSD from this experience. I am not going to lay the whole of his alcoholism on his war experience, there are always other factors, but for the next ten years, he self-medicated with alcohol.

Eventually Uncle P. recovered. He has been recovering ever since. However, I have to wonder if he would have been able to avoid those actively addicted years or if they would have been shorter if he had not been in the military and had this experience?

Uncle T. had a very similar story, even though he came through his time in Vietnam with no physical injuries. He also fell into alcohol addiction. He also found his way to recovery. However, between the two he found he could not be an active part of our sprawling Irish family anymore. Uncle T. is my godfather, but from about the time I was 13 until just very recently I never saw him, none of us ever saw him, only the very occasional phone call. It seems T.’s time in the military gave him a need to control his with less give and take than is the usual in a huge family of strong willed people.

Uncle D. was a different story all together. Drafted in the late 50’s he was a State Side soldier who worked on missile installations. Uncle D. tells the story of how when the Cuban Missile crises started he was stood and watched as the Redstone missiles he worked on all were swiveled to the South and targeted on Cuba. D. had a great military experience, he became a sergeant, he met his wife while serving, he gained skills and discipline which allowed him to do what he always wanted to do, be a dairy farmer.

In my generation of our family, we do not have any soldiers. I do not know if this is a bad thing or not. On the one hand, many of my 100 first cousins are directly involved in public service in one fashion or another. On the other, there is a need for the military and there is something to be said for those who have many advantages serving in uniform.

What I have gained from the veterans I have known in my family and outside it is that soldiers are first and foremost just like the rest of us, they are people, they are citizens. They have their faults, their strengths, and their time in uniform acts to change some of them for the better and some of them for the worst. It is not the fault of the military; this is after all what happens to all of us in life. But it is the nature of the jobs that the military does, the life and death consequences which are around every corner which tend to intensify these changes.

It is this intense nature of their service which deserves our respect, all other actions and choices of the veterans aside. To go where you are told, to fight if you have to, die if you can not avoid it, all at the orders of your nation is special. It does not matter how they got into the military, once the choice was made, they did their jobs and served at the call of their nation.

There may come a time when we do not need soldiers, a time when we will “study war no more, forever”. Until that time, we will have to have some of our fellow citizens putting themselves at risk, mentally and physically. As long as that is true, we do owe those who do so respect for this act. Without them, we would have to do this ourselves, but our current soldiers have chosen to do this. It is this level of potential sacrifice, which we should honor and give respect too.

So, today, I will call my Uncles, I will tell them thank you for their service, even though it was not always voluntary. I will keep going up to any soldier in uniform and thank him or her as well. While I don’t always agree with the mission they are sent on, I can not do anything but express my respect for those who decide to serve.

The floor is yours.