I’ll wear my old woodland camouflage or desert tricolor field jacket when I’m camping. Or, I’ll wear old BDU/ABU pants while camping/working in the yard. I don’t think that screams “Veteran” though, I think that’s advertising “I’m smart enough to wear cheap disposable/shreddable/expendable pants instead of good jeans.”
Tripler
Oh, I’ll wear a boonie in the sun, too. . . for the shade.
I hope this isn’t too much of a hijack of a thread I started, but why do you dislike, “TYFYS”? Is that cliched statement that different than the offering of a discount - which many/most of the vets in this thread gladly accept?
My impression was that a sizable percentage of vets (I have no idea how large of a percentage - maybe just a vocal minority) sorta believed they WERE owed thanks - or something - for their service.
Boonie hats are good for sun protection. Their brim is decently big enough but not too big. A wide brimmed hat will provide more sun protection. But boonie hats are easy to pack, they’re crushable. They’re convenient and they absorb sweat pretty well.
It’s all about the context of the interaction.
It’s 99/100 times, to me, a lazy, dismissive utterance on the par of “Have a good one.” Some examples:
So, normally it comes across as a cliched throwaway statement, normally dropped by people who’ve never served, nor care to even consider what it’s like to serve.
It’s all about the context. 99% of the time, the context and delivery is from someone genuinely, wholeheartedly disinterested.
Tripler
I once had a hat that said “Dysfunctional Veteran: Leave Me Alone.” This post makes me look that way, doesn’t it?
I didn’t think about ink, as the OP specified clothing, but I do have a tat of the 5th Cavalry Regiment’s regimental crest on my right shoulder.
I guess that particular change is forever, even if you weren’t a Marine. 
Yeah they are!
I’ve even worn it down the river with @chacoguy (RIP, brother). Man, a good, broken-in boonie is the most comfy hat I think I could wear.
Tripler
Although it does scream ‘tactical’, doesn’t it (which I also avoid).
I am not military but worked near a base for years, did some research with the military and have moderate respect for its role. Since I am not a vet, perhaps I should say nothing.
However, my hackneyed take on it is there are some vets who valued their time and sense of community more and a few who would function less well without it. I have seen a lot of Canadian veterans. Quite a few of them wear military clothing commemorating famous battles or events from WW1 or WW2 (which Canadians would be more familiar with) long before their actual time of service. Outside of Remembrance Day, this seems more common than clothing specifically mentioning veterans, but I claim no expertise.
Like Tripler, I might wear some old BDU pants or a field jacket if I’m out doing some sloppy work and I don’t want to care about what I’m wearing.
I did a half dozen years in the Reserves, did as good a job as I could and moved on. I am proud of my brief service but wouldn’t feel comfortable wearing it as a public badge of any sort.
After sleeping on my post, I think I did kinda go a little bonkers with my reply. I wanted to be thorough and clear, but I think I derailed the thread’s good train of thought. I’ll step back for awhile.
My apologies to everyone, and I’m switching to decaf for the rest of the weekend.
Tripler
Y’all should see lower-torso BDU trousers, not ‘crankypants’.
My thanks is my retirement check and my medical insurance. TYFYS started out as something somewhat sincere, but it quickly became obligatory for every store clerk to say it automatically, regardless of their belief in the matter.
As for clothing, I got rid of everything other than my dress blues and my original bootcamp-issue sea bag when I retired. I wore the blues twice after retiring, both times for an annual Marine Corps ball at embassies. Eventually, I gave both to my grandson who had an interest in it them. I gave my retirement flag/medal box to my youngest son.
I find that refreshing to hear. I admit I am not terribly active in vet matters - tho I have plenty of friends/family who have served. I am a government employee, and I respect ad appreciate public service in all of its forms - whether in active military, or at the local DMV. But I generally consider them to be job choices, made with an understanding of the risks and rewards - both immediate and future.
I guess what sorta bothers me is when I hear so much about what is owed to vets - as tho they were a monolithic whole. I have no reason to believe that the military is different from just about any other large organization I’ve interacted with, where at least 10% are pretty worthless f-ups, and at least double that is just putting in their time. And then there are the large number who put in their military time pushing paper or whatever stateside. But so often when I encounter vets or vet advocates, they seem to give the impression that each individual was Audie Murphy or something. My suspicion (entirely unfounded) is that there may be an inverse relationship between risks incurred and valor exhibited, vs prominent display of being a vet. As in so many things, init seems so often that those who did the most, brag the least about it, and expect the least recognition/recompense. In most organizations I’ve personally bee involved with, it seems the most rotten apples are over-represented among the folk complaining about what they are “owed.”
At work it has been a mixed bag. Many of the people hired w/ vet preferences have been among the worst of our employees. But I can think of several who exhibit many of what one might consider the best attributes from the military. One of our current supervisors led a small group of Marines in battle in Iraq (sorry I forget the correct terms/ranks). Great guy, great employee. Made an impression on me when he tells me the guys who screwed up in the field and ended up complaining of PTSD were F-ups from the word “go” who should never have been allowed to enlist in the first place.
Thanks for the conversation. I do not intend my remarks to be an insult of any individual in this thread, or vets in general.
I second your suspicion. In my experience, I’ve met more Combat Shoe Clerks festooned with service “vet gear” that are loud about their overseas deployment to Guam or Diego Garcia, than the professionally quiet AF Loadmasters, Army/USMC Infantry or Artillerymen, or even Navy Contracting Officers in regular streetwear, that were exposed to SAF/IEDs.
About the only “vet” thing about me, I admittedly keep, is the haircut.
Tripler
Its so short, all I gotta do is run my hands through my post-shower hair and voila!
I don’t agree at all, I think it is more of a service thing.
Navy guys might wear a ship’s ball cap, especially once they start going bald but don’t generally sport any other clothing or fly a service flag. Air Force seems even less likely to wear stuff. I’m ex-Navy and I don’t wear any vet clothing, though I did get the Vet card to happily accept discounts. Especially useful at Lowes and Home Depot.
Marines are the most likely to wear vet clothes and fly Marine flags. But more often than not, they did see some combat. Marines are different. I’m ex-Navy, but there is no such thing as ex-Marine, ask them. You’re a Marine for life.
Army seems to fall somewhere between Marines and Navy/Air Force. I don’t know enough ex-Army guys to know how many actually saw any combat.
@Dinsdale, you understand the whole thing just about perfectly IMO.
Lots of folks who retire seem to, late in their career, really inhale that “they owe me everything for life.” Which is a separate disease from the fanboys (usually selling something) claiming veterans are a breed apart, the only “true” Americans, and superior to mere citizens. (Cue obligatory reference to Starship Troopers, a cautionary tale if ever there was one.)
The thing I find funniest about the “they owe me” crowd is that these are often folks who go on to embrace a fairly hard right-wing ideology after they leave service. While having spent their entire work life in a fundamentally socialist organization where the public owns all the means of production, the range of incomes from greatest to least is highly compressed, and “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need” is damn near the Prime Directive personnel-wise. And yet the thing they hate most is “Socialism.” While they eat taxpayer-subsidized groceries bought with their taxpayer-funded paychecks after bowling in their taxpayer-owned bowling alley after visiting their taxpayer-provided doctor and clinic.
Cognitive Dissonance much?
Those of us fogeys from the Cold War era have a certain excuse in that the Communist Soviet Union was the official bogeyman, and legitimately so. Old habits of indoctrinated hate die hard.
OTOH, the folks who’ve served from after about 1995 have had Islamics as the official bogeyman, and there’s not much socialist, much less communist about those folks or their governments. With China a runner-up bogyeman, and there’s very little actually Communist or socialist about them either beyond the tired official vocabulary of party rhetoric.
Not to mention their acceptance of disability payments (which allow work with no set off), medical benefits, education stipends… No, I’m not saying vets oughtn’t be provided what the were offered. Just a common attitude of many on the right, “MY benefits are deserved; YOURS are not.”
And just to bare my credentials as an equal opportunity jerk, after 9/11, when I heard the constant talk about all of the martyred “heroes”, I often thought, “No, they didn’t deserve to die like that. But you’re gonna tell me not a single one of those folk was a jerk? Cheated on/beat his wife? Cheated on their taxes? Viewed kiddie porn? Took coffee at work without dropping a quarter? …”
A lot of what you say is true. I will admit to a bit of WTF when I see vets being given houses, cars, free air tickets and the like. I think I once got free government cheese at one point while I was serving. Gave me a warm cozy feeling. 
There were a lot of fuck-ups in my 23 years, and I did my best to either try to do a course correction or to see that they were mustered out. But a lot of the people who were fuckups became that way because of poor leadership on the part of their superiors. Many senior NCOs felt that they were there to harass young troops. My mode was: 1) treat them with respect, 2) teach them how to do their job well, 3) never pass on a problem to the next command.
I don’t wear any of that vet stuff.
When I upgraded my drivers license to the Real ID, I had the option to include “veteran” on it and for some reason they didn’t do it. So I will have to do it next time.
I didn’t think about ink either. I celebrated my 60th birthday by getting my first tattoo, the USMC emblem on my right shoulder.
Quote from a panhandler this morning:
“Spare some change for a vet to get some food this morning.”
Just don’t understand how claiming to be a vet is supposed to open my wallet…
