War & Homecoming

Veteran Identity and the Post-9/11 Generation

Travis L. Martin

• Publisher: The University Press of Kentucky
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9780813195667
• Topic: Sciences sociales
• Subtopic: Étude des média

In War & Homecoming: Veteran Identity and the Post-9/11 Generation, Travis L. Martin explores how a new generation of veterans is redefining what it means to come home. More than 2.7 million veterans served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Their homecomings didn't include parades or national celebrations. Instead, when the last US troops left Afghanistan, American veterans raised millions of dollars for the evacuation of Afghan refugees, especially those who'd served alongside them. This brand of selflessness is one reason civilians regard veterans with reverence and pride.

The phrase "thank you for your service" is ubiquitous. Yet, one in ten post-9/11 veterans struggles with substance abuse. Fifteen to twenty veterans die by suicide every day. Veterans aged eighteen to thirty-four die at the highest rates, leading advocates to focus on concepts like moral injury and collective belonging when addressing psychic wounds. Martin argues that many veterans struggle due to decades of stereotyping and a lack of healthy models of veteran identity. In the American unconscious, veterans are treated as either the superficially praised "hero" or the victimized "wounded warrior, " forever defined by past accomplishments. They are often appropriated as symbols in competing narratives of national identity. War & Homecoming critically examines representations of veterans in patriotic rhetoric, popular media, literature, and the lives of those who served. From this analysis, a new veteran identity emerges—veterans as storytellers who reject stereotypes, claim their symbolic authority, and define themselves through literature, art, and service. Their dynamic approach to life after military service allows for continued growth, agency, individuality, and inspiring examples of resilience for others.

1

A Theory of Veteran Identity

Generally, but not as a rule, I decline the offer to stand and receive applause when musicians or speakers recognize veterans at events. Although not intended as such, I’ve discovered that those aware of my veteran identity often take such refusals as political statements. The best way to describe the look I’ve grown accustomed to receiving is to liken it to the one a person might get after disrespecting the American flag. To some, by refusing to stand I am refusing the patriotic gesture offered and claiming that it is insufficient. To others, I am behaving in a way that is controversial, even anti-American. It’s as though veterans occupy the same symbolic space as the National Anthem or Pledge of Allegiance. No one insists I stand. It doesn’t cause conflict. But it does result in some uncomfortable conversations.

Personally, I refuse to stand for several reasons, some more reasonable than others. Firstly, I don’t enjoy praise when a speaker attempts to levy it on me for the sake of others in the crowd. Is patriotism a chore? Admittedly, and this hearkens back to my experiences in Iraq, I refuse to stand because there’s a paranoid recess in my mind that tells me I shouldn’t make myself a target. Mostly, however, I despise the three to five seconds of being gawked at and analyzed by those sitting in my vicinity. I’ve watched as their eyes go up and down and side to side—an objectifying gaze, not one cast in judgment, but in genuine attempts to discern exactly what a “veteran” looks like. After standing as the recipient of some cheap applause, I’ve found that the discomfort persists throughout the remainder of the event. And it shouldn’t come as a surprise: the ritual results in no longer being a part of the crowd. To be recognized as exceptional is still to be recognized as different.

In its less savory form, patriotism is scripted by social architects. An example is the “halftime tributes” common at NFL football games: “Between 2011 and 2014, the Department of Defense paid 14 NFL teams a total of $5.4 million and the National Guard paid $5.3 million to 11 teams to ‘honor America’s heroes’ before games and during halftime shows.”¹ I doubt such deceptions were what President Abraham Lincoln had in mind at his second inaugural address when he said, “Let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow, and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”² These words were delivered near the end of the American Civil War. Hundreds of thousands of veterans died in that war and those since. Still, our sixteenth president had never seen a halftime show. Those flyovers are pretty spectacular.

Patriotism can be viewed as an exchange. But it is not as simple as gain or loss. Accepting patriotic gratitude carries implicit expectations: conforming to those narratives of war endorsed by the state, condoning all actions of the military—past and present, privileging one’s veteran identity over all other aspects of identity. These expectations are what I refuse when asked to stand for applause at public events. My personal brand of patriotism, informed deeply by my experiences in the military, demands that I hold my country accountable. It demands that I advocate on behalf of veterans in real ways. Rituals, memorials, parades, and halftime shows often do more for civilians than they do for veterans. If the people in those crowds really want to help, they should talk to veterans, get to know them, find out about the issues that impact their lives, and research ways to create change. Then we could all stand for applause, pat ourselves on the back, and tell ourselves we did something patriotic. Performative rituals are often placeholders for authentic attempts to show gratitude to service members.

It is my hope that this theory of veteran identity will help those who want to interact with Iraq and Afghanistan War veterans authentically. I also hope these words will help some of my fellow veterans better understand their place in the world. This book is not a complete historical narrative of veterans’ return home experiences. Such a task is best left to historians. And while the contributions and strains placed on society by veterans are relevant, sociological perspectives play only a supporting role in the pages that follow. Nor will I diagnose the psychological ailments of a few veterans and create a mold that fits them all; that sort of stereotyping has been used, for generations, to vilify or glorify veterans according to the politics of time and place. Historical commentary about returning veterans is common. Sociological research is conflicting. And psychological theories change almost as quickly as they’re developed.

Instead, the pages that follow apply an interdisciplinary approach to veteran identity best described as a combination of social and literary theory. Terry Eagleton defines “literary theory” as “a kind of meta-discourse.”³ Literary theorists examine conscious and unconscious systems of thought by applying interdisciplinary frameworks to texts. The text examined here is the American unconscious. Individual performances of veteran identity; existing historical, sociological, and psychological scholarship about veterans; and cultural representations of veterans are equal parts of that text. The chapters in this book examine discursive and ritualistic practices that impede veterans’ attempts to rejoin society, namely stereotyping and mythmaking, but especially the performance of veteran identity itself.

Dennis Sobolev discusses the difficulty of examining an unconscious, concluding that it is not a byproduct of culture, but rather “the essence of that invisible collective cosmos which forms the existential and experiential world of the empirical subject.”⁴ The existence of veterans in the real world is impacted greatly by how they exist symbolically in the American unconscious. Veteran identity is intricately woven into the fabric of our competing national narratives. To be a veteran is to stand for something greater than oneself. But that greatness is not singular; it is myriad. No single notion of “the veteran” exists because no single story of our nation exists.

As a result, those who interact with veterans project their worldview on them, influencing their experiences, interactions, and collective sense of identity. My discomfort at music and sporting events emerges because I know those well-meaning, patriotic Americans in the crowd likely see me as something I am not. As Robert C. Fuller explains in Americans and the Unconscious (1986), even if an individual or cultural unconscious cannot be observed, its effects can. We can circle what we perceive to be the American unconscious, using conscious descriptions of veterans’ experiences (like the one I provide above) to better approximate their place within it.⁵ To conceive of new ways to support veterans, it is necessary to isolate their symbolic function within a larger system of patriotic discourse. The roles veterans play in that story can be rewarding, but they can also be limiting.

Exceptional Examples versus Exceptional Individuals

Regarding patriotism, the concept of “American exceptionalism” dates back to Alexis de Tocqueville’s nineteenth-century work Democracy in America (1835). Seymour Martin Lipset’s reading of Tocqueville explains that the author never intended to convey that America was superior. Lipset notes that “Exceptionalism is a double-edged concept,” and scholars have used the phrase to convey that America is “different,” a definition connoting both the achievements and the problems of the emerging nation state, not its superiority.⁶ As exceptional examples of American identity, post-9/11 veterans should be treated as individuals, each one different. However, they’ve largely been placed in a superior symbolic position, on a pedestal and regarded with reverence. Oppositely, Vietnam-era veterans were exceptional examples, but they were denigrated and assigned a symbolic position that approximated national guilt. The “Greatest Generation” of the Second World War and the “Forgotten Generation” of the Korean War are monolithic portrayals of veterans in the American unconscious that deny the individuality of each veteran. Whether superficial praise or misguided scorn, these stereotypes rob veterans of their exceptionalism—their difference, and also of their right to self-definition.

“Semiotics,” or the science of signs and how they function, emerges as one tool capable of separating symbols from the meanings they convey. A sign is a thing that conveys meaning beyond its obvious form. For example, a symptom is a sign of a medical condition. Standing for applause when asked is a sign of veteran status, but it is also a tacit endorsement of the person or power orchestrating the ritual. Arthur Asa Berger describes language as a “social institution” or a “system of signs that express[es] ideas.”⁷ Veterans function as symbols, a “subcategory of a sign” within the language Americans use to describe themselves, or at least how they perceive themselves.⁸ Again, not all members of society agree on a shared national narrative, and often for good reason. So, the power to define the word “veteran” or to appropriate veteran identity can privilege one narrative or group over another.

Leaders recognize that the “distinction between war and peace and thus between civil and military life is established and guaranteed by the proper conduct of soldiers.”⁹ One way to guarantee the proper conduct of soldiers is to depict them as superior examples. Such depictions abound in military recruitment campaigns, in low-angle shots of gruff warfighters on posters, in the special rites performed at their funerals, in prayers that elevate them based on the dangers they face, in medical and educational benefits unavailable to nonveterans. However, “the example,” according to Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben, “is characterized by the fact that it holds for all cases of the same type . . . and serves them all.”¹⁰ Traditionally, heroes engage in some act of valor. However, in modern mythmaking, all post-9/11 veterans are regarded collectively as heroes, as superior. As such, they must live up to these expectations.

Veterans must perform identity in a way that does not conflict with flattering narratives, such that it feels like one is under a constant state of surveillance. It is one thing when a veteran earns the title of hero and uses it to lend credibility to a cause. It is another thing when groups, governments, and other stakeholders use blanket stereotypes to define entire generations of veterans. It is easy for a musician or speaker to ask veterans to stand in a crowd for applause. However, it is difficult for many veterans to bury the ensuing feelings of inadequacy, the pains of moral and spiritual injuries, or the guilt from perpetrating violence or surviving when others did not. A better approach to honoring veterans in public spaces would be to provide them with the opportunity and agency to define themselves as exceptional individuals.

Of course, this sort of thing happens all the time—at ballgames, graduations, and inaugurations. So long as the veteran plays their role in these rituals, they convey a sense of unity and acceptance to those watching. There are tangible and intangible benefits for conformity. A problem emerges, however, when the narrative that the veteran is asked to support impedes on their continued growth. Veterans’ accomplishments in uniform, no matter how profound, will always be a part of their identity. But these things cannot represent a whole person or a veteran’s future potential. Homecoming is impossible for veterans when their symbolic position relegates them to existing in the past.

The Veteran’s Symbolic Authority

It was April 2005. I’d had two hours of sleep when I woke up to my platoon sergeant standing over my cot. He asked me to go with him outside of the tent where we could talk in private. Initially, I thought I was in trouble, that I’d left some sensitive item in the Humvee following the previous night’s mission. But that wasn’t the case. As we exited the tent, entering into the sunlight beaming down on that patch of desert just north of Najaf, Iraq, I recognized our platoon leader standing next to a stranger.

“Specialist Martin of Somerset, Kentucky?” asked the man that I did not know.

“Yes, sir.”

“When was the last time you talked to your family?”

“I don’t know, a month or so ago, sir.”

My platoon sergeant asked, “Do you have a brother?”

“Yes.”

I looked up at the stranger to see a cross on his lapel. He was a chaplain. I knew immediately that something was wrong back home. I didn’t have time to guess what it could be.

“Your brother is dead, son.” The words were followed by what felt like a physical punch in the gut. It took three helicopter rides and an airplane to get me out of Iraq. In twenty-four hours, I set foot on three continents and still missed the funeral. And that’s what it is like to get a Red Cross message while at war.

I tell this story because it put me in a rare position. I was yanked out of war and sent home with no preparation. I was not wounded, nor had I completed my four years of “honorable service.” And when I changed out of my uniform, soiled with sand and sweat from weeks in the field—or, more accurately, the desert—I looked and sounded like everyone else. Still, I was different. And it was at this point in my life, based on the way I was treated, that I first recognized that difference.

Everywhere I went, war was all anyone wanted to talk about. They’d bring up stories heard on the news, and I would respond with either clarification or affirmation, but I soon found they preferred the latter. “Do you think it is worth it?” friends would ask. Acquaintances would inquire if I knew so-and-so, as though everyone in the military is on a first-name basis. A distant relative once asked if I had ever killed anyone, making me so angry that I could barely speak; I could only excuse myself and mutter obscenities in the driveway. It became the first instance of the same question repeated by those who gleaned their understanding of war from movies like Full Metal Jacket (1987).¹¹ I was more forgiving when kids would ask the question. But adults? I thought it plainly offensive.

Perhaps strangest of all, amid the grief inflicted on me and my family by my brother’s death, I received displays of patriotism in place of the type of sympathy commonly shown to those who’ve lost immediate family members. After sorting through my brother’s belongings because my parents were unable, I’d hear “thank you for your service.” Even at my brother’s memorial service, held at the church a few days after his funeral, people went out of their way to tell me how proud they were of me. I didn’t want to be the center of attention. I didn’t want to spend my leave walking on eggshells, afraid to break with others’ conceptions of veterans. I wanted to be left alone to grieve. I felt like my veteran identity was hurtful to my family—that the focus should have been on my dead brother....