The following is an open letter from one member of the military to military wives everywhere. He hopes that they will appreciate a male service member’s perspective about what it is like to be in the military. He uses the pronoun “he” but does not mean to ignore or leave unacknowledged the important contributions female members of the military make. Instead, he is simply trying to give his own perspective and not lead people to assume that other members of the military such as female service members would have similar opinions.
Indoctrination
We are a nation of many colors, religions, and ethnicities. Joining the military means giving up much of this and assuming a new identity. It takes a lot of time and effort, but the military is very successful in making people conform. From the very beginning the individual becomes part of a culture where individuality is suppressed, the mission has priority over personal concerns, and sacrifice is part of daily language. This takes a little time to get used to and can be quite different than the civilian world. It is nothing for a civilian worker to change jobs, or ask for higher compensation from a company to continue working. The military perspective is quite different in that it is considered a privilege to ‘belong’ to the military.
To join a branch of the military you must leave your friends and family and sometimes go far away to a ‘boot camp’ where you are expected to change not only your appearance but also your behaviors and attitudes. You are given the same haircuts and clothing.. You are told that everyone is to be addressed by their rank and their last name and the importance of this hierarchy is impressed upon you as you start out at the bottom. Though out boot camp, , most of your time is spent running, or doing push-ups or other forms of physical exercise, this You also learn the history of your branch of service, famous battles fought, and you become aware of connection to them. You also undergo what seems like endless numbers of inspections where your uniform, your locker, your rifle, your shave, your haircut, everything you touch is closely inspected for the smallest infraction. Haircuts are measured to the 1/8 of an inch, items on the uniform are measured with a ruler, folded linen must be exact, beds made tight enough to ‘bounce a quarter on’, shoes polished to a high shine, items in your locker must be put in very specific locations. You live and breathe the watchwords “attention to detail” and it is drilled into your every action over and over again. There is a purpose to these seemingly pointless exercises. Your future actions can have enormous life or death consequences. Your attention to small insignificant details, and your support of your buddies will keep you and them alive.
You no longer simply walk but ‘march’ with military posture. If two recruits are walking together down the street they are taught to walk next to each other and in step. Officers that are met along the way are promptly saluted. You also begin to learn how work in groups, and are given instruction by the ‘drill sergeant’. If one member of the platoon fails at the task, everyone is punished. This teaches you to work as a group. Displays of emotion are punished, unless it is anger, which is rewarded. To teach you how to control your emotions under stress, you are routinely given harder and harder tasks, complete with confusing orders and yelling sergeants, where you cannot possibly succeed. You are given opportunities to show your ability to lead your peers in completion of tasks. Success is rewarded and failure is ridiculed and punished. Nothing, no matter how difficult or daunting, whether long miles, little sleep, constant guard, nothing is allowed to be seen as impossible. Your job is to succeed or die trying. When you have the correct mindset you are then introduced to the skills necessary in your branch of service, such as shooting rifles and patrolling techniques, flight line awareness and safety, ship procedures and rescue swimming, until it is time to graduate and transfer to your active duty station.
Hierarchy
The military operates by hierarchy and order. Everything has its place and function to achieve specific tasks and goals. At the very broadest the task is the defense of the United States and at the narrowest it is to “change the oil on the 1114 High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle” (the Humvee). The higher your rank, the broader the category of tasks you have.. The mission takes precedence over all other concerns and one may be called to duty at three in the morning, or leave for extended training. There is no time clock in the military. You are a ‘soldier’ (or airman, marine, sailor, coastie) 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Time off can be recalled at any time should the mission dictate.
Because the nature of the job, it is essential that orders are quick and crisp, direct and to the point, and at times even yelled. There simply is not time to say ‘please’ when on a combat patrol. When the soldier finds himself in a non-military situation with a task to be completed, he does it in the same way, direct and to the point. If nobody else is going to step up and take charge then he’ll do so. Because of this, many civilians such as employers or spouses, will see him as bossy, rude, loud, power-hungry, insensitive, and angry. To him, he is none of these things but simply someone trying to get things done. When others wish to talk about possible solutions and seek out different points of view the soldier seeks to fix the problem immediately with whatever options are available at that instant. Such initiative is highly prized in the military culture. In this mindset there are no emotional needs, only problems to fix. This translates into frustration for the veteran who may find friends, coworkers, and family, behaving emotionally instead of solving the problem. Simply put, without problems there is no friction, so control your emotions and complete the mission (solve the problem). Someone wanting emotional support from the veteran might find him cold and calculating and believe him uncaring. Yet in his mind he does care, which is why he is attempting to fix the problem. He is likely to feel that problems, even marital ones, do not call for emotion but for problem solving skills and immediate action.
Control
The world that the military operates in is filled with uncertainties that can mean death. Whether it is training in the desert or patrolling streets in Iraq, there are obstacles, challenges, and unknowns that occur that the military unit is expected to overcome. Remember that regimentation, order, control, uniformity are a part of the military identity and have been honed from day one in boot camp. The military mind does not like, uncertainty, vagueness, or spontaneity. It relies on planning, attention to details, assignment of tasks and orders, cohesion, and uniformity. As a cog in the great machine, you are expected to be in control of your actions, to follow the orders of those higher in rank, and to give the correct orders to those under your command. The civilian world offers many challenges because there is much in his environment that he can’t control. He may try to control things that seem ridiculous for civilians or if they are uncontrollable, may become very uncomfortable.
Conformity
There are a couple of ways that the system is kept in place. The first is punishment for breaking the rules. From a small infraction of not having a proper haircut or not doing push-ups when told, to a greater infraction of the accidental discharge of a weapon or leaving out important items unlocked, such actions can be dealt with by assignment of extra duty, physical exercise, loss of liberty (time off) to the more extreme of loss of rank, loss of pay, time in jail, or discharge out of the service. Another way that the system is kept in place is the positive values placed on the various histories and behaviors. Examples of good soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines are talked about with great admiration and medals are given to those who show proper behavior. Units follow mottos and creeds of faithfulness, never ending courage, and willingness to endure. Quitting has no place in the military.
Emotion
Another change from the military culture is that emotions are distrusted and shunned. The mission comes first, orders are given and are expected to be carried out, and there is no place where emotional concerns come to bare. Therefore the soldier seeks to repress emotions in order to get the job done. When a soldier is on patrol and a roadside bomb goes off near the humvee it is not the time to have an emotional breakdown. Instead you are to rely on your training and decision making abilities of your leadership to get you through the emergency. When the sailor is functioning on little to no sleep and is working in the command center and keeping tabs on multiple aircraft landing and taking off from the aircraft carrier, it is not the time to cry about stress and lack of sleep. The military mind has two different classifications, those who can get the job done, competent, and those unable to do so, incompetent. The Marine Corps enthusiastically follows the oft quoted saying ‘semper fi, do or die’. Again, it is about the mission and this impacts the soldier’s ability to relate to people, for the repressing of emotions is deeply learned through repetitious training and experience. As such he might be viewed by some as cold or distant. The same hard-nosed, can-do attitude that makes him attractive as a leader and worker make him difficult to connect with, while for to him, there are no problems that cannot be acted on. The only emotional problems that exist are when others become too emotional and cannot direct their actions against the real problems. He may even be blind to his own emotional needs, relying on the military mindset of knuckle down and try harder. When this doesn’t work the only answer is to shut down even more emotions and try even harder.
Guardians and Protectors
Courage, honor, integrity, commitment, excellence, selfless service, loyalty, respect, decisiveness, initiative, duty and others are the very ideals that the military tries to live up to. Words such as these are written on walls and bumper stickers, awards and banners, and they give meaning to our ceremonies. They are evident in the mottos of the branches and individual units, such as Semper Fidelis (always faithful), Semper Paratus (always prepared), Cede Nullis (surrender nothing), and This We’ll Defend, among many others.
Honor and the role of protector is a driving force to the military mind and these principles are an essential part of who we are. Always ready, always able, always on-call to go forth into battle as our beloved country needs us. This requires constant training in weapons, skills, physical fitness, and mental preparation. The lifestyle of the military is sometimes exotic but often it is filled with hardships. If it were as simple as proving your physical mettle, then there are other ways of doing so without signing a four year enlistment. You can climb mountains or train for a marathon. Yet for the military mind the drive to guard and protect one’s country and family are so strong and such a part of our identity that we willingly will put up with all the hardships that come with living in the military, such as long deployments, constant moving around the country, difficult training exercises, and even war. Take away the greater meaning of our role as protector and we are crippled in our ability to deal with the hardships dealt along the way, particularly those from combat.
We are aware of the terrible nature of war and are thankful that our family does not have to experience what we have. One source of tension for the veteran is his desire to keep war and any associated horrors away from his family. He relishes his childrens’ innocence. However, this also bars him from sharing his experiences with his family, or ‘bringing the war home’. With his first hand knowledge of the realities of a dangerous world filled with war and the sacrifices asked of those guarding against them, the combatant may see other concerns as trivial. He often feels that it is hard to listen to family members complain about relatively minor events. They don’t have a right to complain because they don’t truly understand what is worth complaining about, however, the service member doesn’t want to violate their innocence by informing them. In the veteran’s mind it is bad enough that he experienced war, why spread the mental pictures and pain with those he loves? This leads him to avoid talking to his family. Instead, he complains to his fellow service members and boy does he complain! It is a way of bonding and assuring each other that they are all in this together.
Bond between Warriors
It is natural, then, for people who have shared a difficult experience to feel closer together. It is normal to seek out support from others who have undergone the same trials and challenges to better understand your own experience, for who truly understands you better than someone who’s been where you are? There is a difference between general empathy and the support of someone with first-hand knowledge.
If we can go into a battle and potentially sacrifice our lives for the mission it is a small step to sacrifice other aspects of our life, such as hopes and dreams for a family or another career. You are a part of a larger whole that is working toward the mission and other people depend on your ability to get your job done. To fail at a task is bad, to give up is unforgiveable, but being responsible for the death of a fellow service member is both unforgiveable and unbearable to the self. In the service member’s mind it points to either gross incompetence, lack of character (honor, duty, fortitude, integrity), or sometimes both at once. Survivor’s guilt, a feeling that some veterans from war experience where they feel guilty about returning home alive while others did not, is common. Unfortunately, words of encouragement from someone who is not a veteran, who has not sacrificed and gone through the same hardships to protect and to guard, often ring hollow. If they understood what was worth fighting for they would pick up a rifle and join along. Fellow veterans are not only people who experienced similar events but are also people who chose to adopt the lifestyle and values of the military. Not only are they different than civilians in experiences, but different in kind.
Once you get past the novelty of the uniform, the rank system, the vocabulary, the strange jobs in exotic locales, fully understanding the culture of the military means understanding the following:
· Leave no one behind
· Accomplish the mission
· Never quit
· Live with honor and integrity
As such the veteran typically does not want a big fuss over his experiences. While he’s filled with pride from overcoming different hardships and challenges, he doesn’t seek hero worship from others. Instead he simply wants someone to recognize, truthfully, his experiences as they are. To go willingly into combat, to give up dreams of family in order to continue a military life, these and more are sometimes part of the job. To cheapen the memory of a fallen comrade, past battles, or the uniform and flag, is to not only an affront to them but also the importance of the sacrifices given along the way, the lack of family time, loss of a dream career, loss of a peaceful mind, and more. The veteran asks simply for recognition and respect.
VETERAN SERVICE OFFICERS