Unlike many I encounter on various social websites, my military service was no big life event for me, other than I could not wait to be done with it.
I was yakking with an Army Resrve E6 at work the other day about this. I told him it was "nice" he gets to put "combat veteran" across the back window of his pickup. At least nowadays somebody gives a crap. I got out in '84, between the hatred of the Nam days and the patriotism of the Desert Storm days. In my time nobody gave a hoot except old men in bars. Don't get me wrong, I think it's a good thing for our service people to be recognized but IMHO it's gone way too far. This young E6 lad feels like I
owe him something, like he's
entitled to my respect, bordering on kissing his ass, for doing the job he volunteered to do. He even feels like he
deserves special parking spaces and the only reason he has that decal is so other people will bow down to him.
I told him to go F his pompous self. And in a not so respectful way.