There's Something Different About Veterans

I watched this Black Rifle Coffee Company video the other day. Watch it until the end . . . then you’ll understand why I was in tears at the end.

As we all move into this project together, you’ll notice that older veterans and legacy will get there fair share of attention.

I can’t help it. I’m turning 80 this month, and a lot of my waking day is spent trying to get the story of the Delta Divers out there.

I’m sure glad that I ran across this video, and it made me remember this essay I wrote a couple of years ago. It’s about my feelings towards veterans — Vietnam Vets in particular.

They always say write about what you know.

Military veterans have been described in many ways. Some are ceremonial. Some are political. Some are sentimental. But when you get down to it — Veterans are a special breed of people.

Not special because they believe they are better than anyone else. In fact, most veterans will tell you the exact opposite. They tend to be uncomfortable when called special, suspicious of ceremony, and quick to redirect attention to the men and women they served beside.

What makes them different is something far less visible. It is the shared experience of standing in a place where life can change — or end — very quickly and knowing that the person next to you might be the only reason you make it home.

That experience leaves a mark.

It shapes the way veterans see the world, the way they relate to each other, and often the way they live the rest of their lives.

And that story stretches across generations — from the the South Pacific, to the jungles of Vietnam, to the deserts of Iraq and Afghanistan, and to every quiet duty station in between where Americans have stood watch while the rest of the country slept.

One of the first things you notice about veterans is how quickly they recognize each other.

It doesn’t matter if they served in different wars, different decades, or different branches. A Marine from Fallujah can sit down with an Army infantryman who fought in the Ia Drang Valley in 1965, and within ten minutes they will be speaking the same language.

Part of that language is humor. Veterans have always used humor as armor. The darker the situation, the darker the joke. It’s not meant to be disrespectful — it’s survival. When people live in environments where things can go wrong in a heartbeat, laughter becomes a pressure valve.

Another part of that language is silence.

Veterans often understand things that don’t need to be explained. They recognize the way someone pauses before finishing a sentence, or the way a memory drifts into the room without warning.

Sometimes the conversation simply stops, and both people sit quietly for a moment. No one feels the need to fill the space.

That silence is part of the brotherhood and sisterhood that service creates.

It is a bond that civilians often admire but rarely fully understand.

More than 2.7 million Americans served in Vietnam between 1965 and 1973. Most of them were barely out of their teens or early twenties when they arrived in a place that seemed half a world away — dense jungle, oppressive heat, unfamiliar languages, and an enemy that rarely fought on conventional terms.

It was a war fought in rice paddies, mangrove swamps, jungle ridges, rivers, and villages whose names Americans had never heard before.

Like in all wars, the soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines who served there quickly learned that survival depended on each other. Units developed a level of trust that went far beyond normal workplace relationships.

In combat zones, a mistake could cost lives. A careless movement, a missed detail, or a moment of hesitation could trigger an ambush, a mine, or a sniper round.

Young Americans learned very quickly that responsibility did not wait for age.

Nineteen-year-old squad leaders commanded men only a few years younger than themselves. Helicopter crews flew into hot landing zones day after day. Engineers cleared roads and bridges that could be mined overnight. Riverine units patrolled narrow waterways where the jungle closed in like a tunnel.

And divers — working beneath muddy water where visibility was often measured in inches — performed missions that few people back home even knew existed. They searched for explosives, cleared obstacles, recovered equipment, and sometimes bodies, operating in an environment where a single mistake underwater could be fatal.

When those veterans returned home, many discovered something they had not expected.

The country had changed while they were gone.

Some Americans welcomed them. Many did not. The Vietnam War had divided the nation politically and culturally, and the veterans of that war often found themselves caught in the middle.

For years, many of them simply stopped talking about their service.

They built careers. Raised families. Tried to move forward.

But the memories never disappeared. They simply waited quietly in the background.

Over time, the nation began to recognize what those men and women had endured. The dedication of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., in 1982 marked a turning point. The black granite wall — etched with more than 58,000 names — became a place where veterans could finally gather, remember, and reconnect.

For many Vietnam veterans, it was the first time they felt that their service had truly been acknowledged.