Statues of Sand

The Shifting Place of the American Veteran

In the first part of the 20th century, Veteran status in the United States was as prestigious as it was widespread. The returning doughboys were so revered that an entire international holiday, Armistice Day on November 11th, was established in their honor in 1919. No generation of warriors since the Civil War — most certainly not the Indian fighters, soldiers of the Spanish-American War, or COIN fighters in the Philippines, the Isthmus of Central America, or the Caribbean — had been lauded with the same honors.

Perhaps it was because America played the decisive role in ending that four-year-long hellscape which paints black and gray pictures in the minds of all who imagine it. Perhaps it was because of its uniquely large-scale horror, and the seemingly colorful heroism of the young doughboys who marched in and, seemingly, brought an end to things with their presence. Only two other Generals in American history at time of writing hold the rank of “General of the Armies,” which was created for John J. Pershing in his lifetime — those being George Washington and, as of April 19, 2024, Ulysses S. Grant — the past is not even past. When World War II began two decades later, the still-living Pershing outranked George Marshall, Douglas MacArthur, Henry Arnold, and Dwight Eisenhower — all 5-stars.

In the Roaring Twenties and Depression years, Veterans’ organizations like the American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars surged in membership. The National Commandant of the American Legion was a legitimate political figure at this time, whose Veteran vote many office-seekers and office-holders sought in exchange for promises of Veterans’ benefits. There were so many Veterans in need of benefits, in fact, that an entire executive department had to be created to deal with them — the Veterans’ Bureau, the predecessor to today’s Department of Veterans Affairs.

But perhaps nothing better demonstrates the number and influence of the returned doughboys than the time they marched on Washington in 1932. The “Bonus Army” they called themselves, as they sought a service bonus, which Congress voted to provide them, many years before it was set to take effect, given the ongoing Great Depression. For weeks, the Veterans camped in Washington, D.C., demanding bonuses they believed belonged to them, before a who’s who of future generals — including MacArthur, Patton, and Eisenhower — rode cavalry through the camps to disperse the Veterans. Such was the unpopularity of this move that it’s arguable that it lost Herbert Hoover the election that year.

One hundred and five years after the first Armistice Day dedicated to this body of men, the American Veteran is a picture on a postcard, a name on a building, a concrete memorial in the National Mall, or a bronze statue corroding with the nation he lived and died to protect. The American Legion is a dying order of old men who play bingo and have picnics. The VFW is a glorified Veteran’s Bar. The Bonus Army is as forgotten as the men who made it up, and the generals who broke it up have been made into symbols for a different Army.

The number of Veterans only increased following World War II. Nearly the entirety of American society wore the uniform of some branch in some far-off place, and every man was manufactured into a hero like the guns he and his brothers-in-arms carried, the bombers they flew, and the tanks they drove. The federal government, aware of the Bonus Army fiasco and the threat of a large body of men trained to kill with combat experience backing it up, showered them with adulation, benefits, housing loans, and a G.I. Bill, to ensure that MacArthur’s legionaries did not make good on his destiny to be the American Caesar.

But a new paradigm emerged from this. There can only be so much glory awarded at one time, to only so many men. The era for heroes had passed by the time the boys who grew up listening to Army Hour on the radio came of age to enlist. Not that there wasn’t a war for them: the North Koreans had crossed the 38th parallel in what looked likely to become a continuation of the Pacific theater, complete with the same Douglas MacArthur in supreme command. But the militarism of American society was sated, and they were turning to fast cars, Rat Packs, Hollywood, and Buddy Holly.

By the time of Vietnam, American society had shifted away completely, and the mood (at least in cultural memory if not necessarily in historical fact) turned against the men who went to fight, but more so against the men who sent them to fight. For all the bellyaching of the Boomers who may or may not have gone to Vietnam about their treatment upon coming home, the real forgotten war was the silents who went to Korea and got nothing for it, and whose sole cultural memory is M*A*S*H, more allegorical about Vietnam than the Korea it was set in.

Ever since Vietnam, which at least could claim to be a war in the sense Americans understood a war to be, the status of Veteran has been bloodlet with each new decade. Too few new products of hard combat have come to replenish their depleting numbers. The 1970s were a breather from Vietnam, the 1980s had the invasion of Grenada as the sole significant combat operation of the decade, and though the 1990s boasted the push-button war of Desert Storm, that was more a triumph of computers and GPS than of boots on the ground (to the point that there was a whole movie made, Jarhead, about the lack of combat in combat environments). And the finally-ended, all-too-drawn-out GWOT (with the sole gratifying exception of Fallujah) has produced a class of Veterans whose combat experience “in theater” amounted mostly to scanning cards to enter the DFAC and, well, eating at the DFAC.

By no means do I want those with combat experience in the GWOT or any other war listed to assume disrespect on my part to your service downrange. These wars were trying on the warfighters precisely because of their lack of direct combat. IEDs, mortars, rocket attacks, snipers, and even in some cases convoy ambushes were all realities in these wars. But the casualty figures are not comparable, and that is a fact which has implications.

The reality is that now, the dangers of military service are measured in the potential of danger, rather than the amount of kinetic danger the kind of which was ubiquitous as late as Vietnam. And the social prestige and status extended to Veterans have been drained, as has the mythology attached to the wars in which they served. Now, the only way a young man can get a fraction of the prestige his grandfather at Saipan got is by joining the Special Forces; and, given the recent behavior of many of its Veterans, even JSOC is starting to lose the combat prestige it seemed to preserve.

Myths require blood, metaphorical and literal, to perpetuate. The myth of the Veteran as much as any other. And the tragedy of the modern world is that a system has been set up which ensures such safety and non-violence that there is no more place for great heroes or myths of struggle. As Terry Davis once said, “Part of the beauty and desolation of the modern world… the young lions lack prey.” There are no more Gettysburgs, Little Big Horns, San Juan Hills, Meuse-Argonnes, D-Days, Iwo Jimas, Chosin Reservoirs, Khe Sanhs, or even 73 Eastings. There’s just drones, rockets, and airstrikes. And Veteran status in that world has come to mean little more than a welfare parasite who can tolerate some yelling and long hours.

The last doughboy died in 2011. The number of still-living G.I.s dwindles each year. Korea Vets, few in number in the first place, are disappearing. And though the Vietnam Vets can still be found somewhat regularly, they’re starting to show their age, as are the few Desert Stormers. Even the GWOT Vets are showing gray hairs. The old world is passing away as it always does, and the new world struggles to fill its place.

But the title of Veteran is not meaningless yet; otherwise, yours truly would not have sought it. The spirit it embodies now is the spirit of service, of sacrificing years and youth to fill the big shoes that can’t really be filled, and to endure the constant comparisons, the bemoaning of how the new generation is nothing like the old, and how poorly we will perform the next time a war rolls around. Perhaps that is what it means to serve now. To step forward into the place our far greater fathers filled far better than we ever will be able to. Perhaps that’s what it always meant.

So on this Armistice Day — Veterans Day, as of 1954 — no matter your opinion of the American Veteran as he is now or as he once was, respect the title and not the man. Respect the place he filled, and the men he loved enough to fill it. And respect the future place he may be required to fill, as modernity is as impermanent as the world it replaced and the men who built it.

And if you yourself are a Veteran or currently serve, I hope you plan to celebrate your Monday off from work the way I do: getting your free mediocre meal from Applebee’s. Because as tarnished and bled-dry as being a Veteran becomes, the waitress there will still say, “Thank you for your service,” and she means it. Even if she doesn’t mean it.