Veterans Day Thoughts

Over the last few years, I have been fighting with my inner demons when it comes to being a Veteran. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve never stopped being proud of my service and who I served with during my eight years. But I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about our mission and if all the death and destruction was worth it. The best way to explain it, and the way I explained it to my therapist, is that it feels like my moral compass has been recalibrated.

I’ve officially been out of the military for 19 years, which is more than double my actual eight years of service. And it’s been 21 years since my life was forever changed in Iraq. I don’t know if it’s the distance between the war and where I’m at now in my life, or if it’s the fact that we have witnessed a genocide occur in Palestine for the past two years that triggered something in my brain.

Whatever it may be, I’ve struggled with being defined as a Veteran. You can imagine that puts me in a tough spot, considering I write military fiction, and quite literally market myself as a Combat Veteran Author.

Yet, I still carry the title. I still proudly stand at attention when the Star-Spangled Banner is played, and on Memorial Day, I still feel the rush of tears as I think about those I lost in combat and beyond their call of duty.

The soldier who leaves for war is not the same soldier who comes back from war.

Such was the case for J.D. Salinger. Salinger carried the first six chapters of the novel Catcher in the Rye with him during D-Day and the invasion of Utah Beach, in Normandy, France. Salinger served in five campaigns before being discharged for “battle fatigue”, which we know today as post-traumatic stress. He would go on to complete the novel, and it was published in 1951.

Salinger’s daughter, Margaret, would later share in an interview that ‘the military remained with him even after returning home. She remarked that, from the clothes he wore, to his deaf ear from a mortar shell explosion, the war followed him in all that he did and in all of his writings.’ (VA article on Salinger)

Overall, I believe that recalibrating my moral compass has been a positive change in my life. Although the last two years have been a mental struggle, I have been grateful for the support I receive from my therapist and my family. As I now reflect on my time in combat, I know I can’t change the past. All I can do is move forward and continue to heal.

Perhaps the recalibration of my moral compass means I’m finally on the path to healing.

I’ll never be the 23-year-old soldier I once was. But I can be the battle-worn veteran who finds peace after war.