Older vets to post-9/11 vets: 'We had it harder.'

The answer to the question is, hell yes they did, but not for the reasons you may think. Mike & The Mechanics The Living Years was the first thing I thought of when I was reading this.



WWII veterans came home when almost every family had someone serving. My husband's 3 uncles and Dad served. My uncles served in WWII. My Dad was younger and served in the Korean War. By the time he came home there were less returning from combat and less experiencing the same things. By the time my husband came home from Vietnam, even less served and they had even less support. They had it harder than past generations because they went alone and came home alone. They didn't send them all as a group. They deployed for one year and then caught a commercial flight home alone.

None of them had the press coverage unless someone did something wrong and the media just like today jumps all over the story making sure they mention the military connection. What they came home with was kept secret within the family. In other words, they buried it because they didn't really have a choice.

Right now it is important to point out that it was the Vietnam veterans pushing for everything that is available today for the OEF and OIF veterans. The newer generation of veterans also have the ability to communicate with veterans from all across the nation.

The redeployments do make it harder on them but the support for them is better. In some ways there is too much support. Yes, I said that. Too much support that is not based on research or facts. Everyone seems to want to do something but few spend the time to understand exactly what it is they are supporting.

Older vets to post-9/11 vets: 'We had it harder.' Did they?
By Bill Briggs
NBC News contributor

The war stories from his grandfather, though sparse in detail, blended one moment of explosive drama with a vague reference of death — all wrapped around a description of how old-school military men used to handle both experiences.

David Weidman, who spent two tours in Afghanistan with the Air Force, recalls his late grandfather, a veteran of World War II and Korea, telling him that he survived having his body and his Jeep blown through a wall. He did not reveal to Weidman where that attack happened. He also gave his grandson some advice: “You don’t want to be in a foxhole talking to a guy one minute and then you turn around and he’s dead. You just don’t want to experience that.”

“He said he just dealt with it all. It’s that same mentality: ‘I did what I had to do. I got myself better then I went back to work.’ Other than that, he never spoke about the wars at all. That tells me he never did deal with it,” added Weidman, 32.

Cultural fault lines clearly run between generations of veterans who saw action in different conflicts or who wore the uniform in different eras, including peacetime. The refrain echoed by some older veterans to some younger ex-service members: “We had it so much harder than today’s military.”

It is, quite likely, a tradition that hearkens back to the Civil War or possibly the Revolutionary War, according to some ex-service members. But many post-9/11 veterans who have chatted with older veterans revealed the sentiment they've often heard carry the same note: “We just came home, put our heads down and got to work — without any whining."
read more here

For the older veterans they committed suicide and tried to but no one talked about it. They were arrested for crimes but again, no one was talking about veterans courts. They had serial marriages trying to hang on to someone in their lives but because they had unaddressed issues, too many marriages didn't stand a chance. Then there were the kids of Vietnam veterans trying to deal with their own issues with their parents' PTSD.

Veterans are and always will be a minority in this nation so getting them to stand together is vital and separating them by the title of their years is not the answer. Putting them together with the "content of their character is."

Every generation in this case should thank the one before because all of their frustrations open the doors for today's veterans.