Whereas the 11th of November 1918, marked the cessation of the most destructive, sanguinary, and far reaching war in human annals and the resumption by the people of the United States of peaceful relations with other nations, which we hope may never again be severed
- Congressional Declaration of Armistice, June 4, 1926
I hate the patriotic holidays. Have done since shortly after my Navy discharge in 1996. They make me want to hide in dark places. I want nothing more than to be with myself, to ignore the day entirely, or to sit with other Veterans and talk of matters entirely unrelated to the occasion. It took me a long time to figure out why. When I did, it took me even longer to process it. In fact, like a lot of Veterans, I'm still trying to figure it out and make my peace.
Like about half of all who serve, I come from a family that considers soldiering to be a rite of passage. Grandpa's ancestors came over from County Cork and immediately earned two Medals of Honor, one at Pickett's Charge, the other at Little Big Horn. Grandma's people have been here since before the beginning, and one of her great-great-great whatever uncles was a make-believe Mohawk one frigid, hotheaded, stupid night in Boston. Service is a major component of who and what I want to believe I can be. Service is what I ran away from for a decade and a half when it turned out enlistments have consequences.
I saw no action in my war. I was present, accounted for, diligent in my services, and utterly, ultimately, idle. I wasn't called on to fire a shot, nor was I fired upon. The most traumatic event I endured was a total loss of ship's power while moored in Kuwait harbor, the last tactical information being that a battery of Iranian surface-to-surface missiles had painted us and we were totally vulnerable. Nothing came of this, and I left the Gulf unscathed (I thought) and feeling very much not-at-all like a combat Veteran.
It wasn't until halfway through my enlistment that I knew something was off. I was in my early 20s, pretty fit, and yet I was in constant, unremitting pain. It felt like my joints were full of sand from that Arabian desert. My muscles cramped and sometimes tore from no proximal cause. The bottoms of my feet peeled and burned constantly. My head hurt, I had implacable insomnia, and sometimes I had a hard time focusing because my sight went all wonky and my balance abandoned me. I got fat because I couldn't maintain a steady regimen of exercise. And in 1996, just after receiving my discharge, I told my civilian doctor I thought maybe I had Gulf War Syndrome.
Of course, in those days, claiming you were suffering from the variety of unexplained symptoms that was a quick way to earn contemptuous dismissal, at best, and a psych eval at most likely. My concerns and comments were noted in my Kaiser Permanente medical record, and no followup was recommended or pursued. Another nutball Veteran looking for a handout or attention. I never even considered going to the VA; those places were for real Veterans, guys who had their legs blown off, not guys like me who just had whiny little complaints about imaginary "syndromes." I soldiered on. What else could I do?
Over the ensuing 15 years, I worked through the pain. I overdid the ibuprofen and the aspirin because my skill set provided no other options than manual labor. I tried stretching, drinking gallons of water a day on a schedule (because that's another weird thing, I no longer have a sense of thirst, which complicates things), I hit the gym and bulked up to the point I could bench nearly 400 pounds and could squat press a Volkswagen. But the cramps continued, the aches alternated between dull annoyance and life-crushing impingement, I still couldn't sleep, I was still often incapacitated by spells that I now know are a special type of migraine, and the VA was still busily dismissing the growing pile of evidence that something unforeseen had affected about a third of all the troops sent into the combat zone during the Gulf War. And every year I was reminded with rows of flags and jet fighter flyovers that I wasn't a real Veteran, because real Veterans had visible scars, not "Medically Unexplained Illnesses."
So the patriotic holidays for the past 17 years have been nothing to me but a thrice annual reminder that despite the fact that I signed up at the earliest opportunity, despite the fact that I meant every word of my oath of service, and despite the fact that I willingly and readily accepted my deployment to a war zone, I'm not a Veteran. Not a real Veteran. At least, that's how it seems to me, and I suspect how it feels to a lot of guys who can't understand their health problems and the Pentagon's response to same. And I don't suspect anything will ever change this sense of isolation and betrayal.
At least there aren't any fireworks on Veteran's day. There's that much to be thankful for.
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