They only allow you if you’re literally a veteran of a foreign war, so people who served in the military but were never in an actual war or during wartime were stationed stateside don’t count. Also it has to be a declared war (which they used to exclude Vietnam Veterans) though they seemed to have relaxed it by the time of the Gulf War.
But with that specific criteria, it really seemed like they expected the United States to basically get into a massive overseas war every 20 years, as that would be the only real way to get new members, but then they excluded the Vietnam Vets which would have been the 20 years after WW2, so what did they expect us to get into a massive war in the 1980s to replenish their numbers?
They excluded Vietnam temporality. But in the 1980’s there were plenty of WW2 and Korea veterans around anyway.
Then came the various Big Sandy wars in 1990 and on.
So, never any problems getting members.
Do you think those who last served in Afghanistan just a few years ago, will all be dead by 2045? Or even Desert Storm, 1990- they would be in their 70’s.
Yeah, that part has been long gone, and since they counted Korea it wasnt a rule at all. They excused Vietnam for a while as basically they were a bunch of old WW2 vets.
Or one could join the American Legion. My dad’s chapter here in Georgia was his beloved Legion Hall #271, and then there was #534 a few blocks away known informally as “the Back Legion.” By the 2000s they had long been invited to merge, but its members always voted to stay separate, instead finally merging in 2009 with another Black post 20 miles away. Akin to declining a high school reunion at a school where you’d been treated like shit.
My grandfather was a VFW post commander, and when he retired they named the post after him. Years later when he died, we found they had merged his old post with another with his name as part of the new post. I am a 20 year military vet, but I don’t qualify for membership as all my time was in the US.
I was looking for my grandfathers old post info recently, and found that once again there has been more consolidation and his name has now been lost to history, only his obituary that comes up in google mention his VFW post.
Stethem was killed by terrorists. Any military member killed or wounded by terrorists will be awarded the Purple Heart. Stethem was awarded the Purple Heart. Any Purple Heart recipient is eligible for membership in the VFW.
That battle against my ignorance has already been clearly fought by @Loach on the point of SW2 Stetham, but please don’t let that stop you from coming along afterwards to shoot the wounded.
However, the Marines who appeared at the chow lines on my ship, bandaged after firefights with the Philippines’ New Peoples’ Army, or the National Guardsmen who tangled with the Sandinistas, and all the other “training incidents” that Reagan ran because he couldn’t get congressional support… no VFW for you.
Right, but you were saying that he should be eligible for membership by virtue of being killed in action. If you can’t join posthumously, then being killed in action actually disqualifies you from membership.