Retired Army, was the whole of my early life, retired as a full bird Colonel which was essentially the goal I had when I decided to go through the process of getting nominated to West Point. I finished my time as a cadet basically right as Vietnam had ended, morale was low, there wasn’t a ton of glorifying combat veterans going on, even within the service which was at least quasi-insulated from the critiques of the military born out of the 60s combat roles and a long and financially rewarding career weren’t necessarily linked in the minds of most.
I spent the overwhelming majority of my career as a desk jockey, I had a career path and expectations of salary that I felt were best met by working in the Ordnance Corps. Not only was it the perception (and I think reality) this was the best path to getting promoted fast enough to retire at O-6, all my research at the time suggested this career path gave me the most opportunities after retiring to get a good paying civilian job. You have a lot of skills and connections that can get you pretty well paid in the defense industry.
There’s guys I was in the Academy with who have given their lives in service to their country. I won’t pretend that as cold and calculating as I am, even as I’ve been my whole life, that I wasn’t moved at all by all the camaraderie and the esprit de corps that is drilled into you. I definitely respect and was moved by that stuff, but like the simple reality is I wanted to have a good career and retire with a good pension and retire as young as possible and then leverage that into a good civilian salary. I came from a real poor family but had really good grades, good SAT scores, good extracurriculars and felt like this was a way out for me of the cycle of poverty that defined my family for generations and still defines most of them.
There’s a lot of people who join the military out of a genuine fidelity to country and a desire to serve, and some of them pay a high price, some pay the ultimate price, in service of that goal. But there’s also a ton of people who are in it for the same reasons you might pursue any career, and that’s me. I don’t feel comfortable with the worship of guys just because they wear a uniform I wore on my way to an office job for a few decades. I think there are a ton of real heroes in the military and you can read about the type of men they are and were if you ever look through Medal of Honor citations or citations for the lower precedence medals like the Distinguished Service Cross or Silver Star. There’s a lot of people in the military who will never see a battlefield and aren’t in an MOS or AOC that is likely to see combat. That doesn’t besmirch their character but I just don’t feel that dealing with managing the procurement/maintenance/deployment of equipment essentially as an upper level white collar manager is reason to get parades and strangers coming up to you in airports–I don’t dress in my old uniforms for Veteran’s/Memorial day or participate in that stuff.
Also maybe it’s just the old man in me, but I get a little “annoyed” that people don’t differentiate Memorial Day from Veteran’s Day. Memorial Day is actually supposed to be specifically for the military fallen, not for anyone who has ever served, Veteran’s Day is supposed to be for that. It annoys me when I see people on facebook or what have you say “thank a Veteran today!” due to the memorial day holiday.