11/11/2023
A few weeks ago, Chloe's middle school emailed an invitation for family members who had served in the military to come talk to the students about Veterans Day. A number of us accepted the invitation, most of us fathers but, in at a least a couple of cases, grandfathers.
It was an interesting mix. Of those I met, three had served in Iraq or Afghanistan. One had fought in Vietnam.
None of those with whom I was able to compare notes had known quite what to expect when they came. Personally I was astonished.
For one thing, in the front of the school, American flags had been planted every few feet. At the main doorway were student-made posters that read "Veterans, thank you for your service." These continued on the walls of the long hallway leading to the school auditorium.
That we would be speaking there was the second surprise. When I had spoken about Veterans Day once before, in another school district, it was just to talk for ten or fifteen minutes in a few social studies classrooms. In this instance, students from each social studies class came to the auditorium en masse and we talked to them for the entire 50-minute period, of which there were nine. I was able to be there for five.
Third, nearly without exception, each student gave us close attention and we fielded numerous questions. Given that these were middle school students, I was not expecting that level of engagement.
Each veteran brought his own approach to the subject. In the first period, I spoke alongside an Army physician who had served a tour in Afghanistan. He gave a short PowerPoint presentation that offered a positive but I thought realistic portrayal of his service down range. For example, he talked about the importance of applying direct pressure to stop a bleeding wound and brought along a couple of tourniquets for the students to examine. This was age-appropriate--I had learned the same information in the Boy Scouts--and naturally he sidestepped the details of what this operation looked like in practice. Still, it was refreshingly down to earth.
Another veteran--an Air Force Command Chief Sergeant Major who was resplendent in his dress uniform; he told me he had spent months slimming down just so he would fit into it comfortably--also gave a brief PowerPoint presentation, supplied by the American Legion, that focused on the virtues and values that one learned from military service.
The Vietnam veteran, a grandfather in his mid-70s, had served as an officer in a field artillery battery. Of course the kids had no idea of what a "battery" was, and may have been bewildered to learn that it consisted of 8-inch guns, although the fact that these miniature guns had a range of 11 miles surely gave them an idea of their power. In this respect he typified all of us: at one time or another, each of us lapsed into military-speak, using language that came naturally to us and not realizing how much of it was inaccessible to the students.
This veteran's story was by far the most poignant. He explained that he had not particularly wanted to join the military, but since he stood a good chance of being drafted he wanted to serve on his own terms. (I don't think any of the students knew that not all veterans are veterans by choice.) He was modest and mostly there to answer any questions the students might have. I liked him a lot.
As a professor, I am by trade comfortable in classroom situations and was able to draw out some of the veterans, particularly the grandfather, by asking them questions. But I also talked a lot and at times worried about dominating the session. Still, there were four points I wanted to make.
One was the modest nature of my own service; I wanted students to realize that although each of us veterans had signed the same blank check (an analogy I used repeatedly without it once occurring to me that few of them knew what a check was, much less a blank check), our country had in effect filled in amounts that varied greatly.
Another was the fact that my military service had proven invaluable in my personal life, particularly in terms of managing a serious mental illness called bipolar disorder--whenever possible I speak openly and matter-of-factly about having a mental illness as a way of challenging the stigma. This led one student to disclose, during the Q&A, that he himself had autism, which was very brave of him and I realized he found it heartening to encounter a veteran who had to deal with something that was not altogether dissimilar.
Third, I laid stress on how much of being in the military consists of enduring loneliness, discomfort and petty degradations. To my mind, this is an aspect of military service that civilians think of least.
Finally--and this is not a point that came to me until I saw all those posters--I talked about how, when I was their age, no veterans were ever invited to speak, how shabbily Vietnam veterans had been treated when they came home from the war, how television and movies had routinely portrayed them as mentally disturbed and even dangerous, and how our reflexive impulse to thank veterans for their service is, in effect, a form of repentance for this national disgrace. I conveyed this in different language, of course, but as far as I was concerned, it became the single most important thing I had to say.
Taken on the whole, although I certainly endorsed uplifting sentiments such as the way that teamwork and character are at the heart of military service, I was far and away more focused on stressing the costs of military service.
The students, for their part, were surprisingly perceptive. One of them asked what I would have told my younger self if I could go back in time and give advice about entering the military. Several asked about what injuries the veterans had suffered. (Nobody had been wounded, but the Vietnam veteran had suffered significant hearing loss thanks to his proximity to the boom of howitzers.) On at least three occasions the subject of PTSD cropped up. When the students had created those posters saying, "Veterans, thank you for your service," they had a better sense of what they were thanking us for than I would have guessed.
