There is the saying "sharper than a serpent's tooth is an ungrateful child"
I do agree that vets can sometimes come down hard on those who never saw combat or even service. Let me see if I give you a perspective that every vet may not share, but I would not say is inappropriate.
Imagine yourself back in the days of Vietnam. In the beginning, it was honorable to go. You were serving your country, you did your duty. You had no idea what sh!t you were going to. What you got was something not found in novels describing the glory of war to say the least. By the time the war wound down, the American people were sick of getting body bags and no sense there was ever a purpose to the war. Soldiers returning, wanting not glory, but just to get on with their lives found that their own people hated them as much as the enemy. There was no rest from their misery. Still soldiers went over, knowing some of it, but you never really know. They had heard the horror stories of atrocities committed by soldiers, and were not going to get involved in that. Guess what? You still went where you were told, did what you did, because it isn?t a democracy in the military. One day you may go into a village, and here comes a child towards you. You smile towards it, then someone puts a bullet into her head. You scream and want to shoot the fckr who committed the outrage. That?s when you learned that someone sent this six year girl out with enough explosive charges on her body to blow you and your friends up; Someone killed a child that you and your friends could live. You vomit and vomit, and you justify it. Maybe you would have taken the chance, but what about the others who depended on you. Every night you see her for a while, but it happens less and less. You get less and less sensitive to it. You eat among the bodies and joke sitting in the company of the dead. Some never get used to it completely though. Nobody wants to dwell on it. Hardly does any good now does it?
Well the time comes and our soldier comes home. He knows the welcome he will get, but he has one consolation. He can think that he suffered so another did not, and that by god the next generation wont. The problem now is that the next generation or two has no idea what it was like, Few who served in the Gulf war knew it as bad, but every soldier knows what their duty is. The young today have no idea what a war is, except in theory. No experience with it, did not even live through the times when the body count was posted on the nightly news. No context at all. Everything is taken for granted. They are indeed thankless, or at least incapable of fully grasping what has been handed to them. What can set an old soldier off though is listening to people rant on about the service, never distinguishing between those who make policy and those who have to live with them. Regulations aren?t made by soldiers who serve in harms way. I think it is the carelessness of those criticizing that sets people off. Don?t like the policy? Yes go after it; but don?t say the damned military or some such thing, because the military is a whole lot of people, including those who were or might be shot at. I am not speaking for HappyPuppy, because everyone has different reasons and experiences, but I know it is true for some.
Cheers to those that are in.
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