On Friday Meteor Blades published an excellent diary titled
Obama unveils civilian jobs program for out-of-work veterans. His diary reminded me of my time in service and what it was like to get out of the military. As a veteran I am very concerned about veterans rights, and the plight of my brothers in arms.
I know how hard it was for me to assimilate back into civilian life when I came home so many years ago and I was a cold war veteran. I cannot imagine how difficult it is for the veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan to integrate back into society. In talking to recent veterans that I have come across over the last few years I have found that the way the Army, and I assume the other branches of service, releases soldiers is much the same way as it was when I got out twenty some years ago.
The final ETS briefing I attended consisted of three segments; one a sergeant came in and gave us information about our travel pay to get home. When she asked where I was from and I said Wisconsin she said, “That is out by Nebraska so your travel pay will be x dollars.” I did not have the heart to tell here Wisconsin was nowhere near Nebraska. The second segment was a soldier who went over changing over our SGLI (Soldier’s Group Life Insurance) over to VGLI (Veteran’s Group Life Insurance). Something I wish I had done so many years ago. The final segment was the VA Man. The VA Man called all of us in the room nine kinds of stupid for getting out of the military. He briefly mentioned some VA benefits and then gave only one piece of advice that was any good. He told us to register our DD214s with the county registrar of deeds, a piece of advice that has saved my behind a couple of times.
The next day I was home in Madison, Wisconsin, and I thought I was the same kid who had signed up four years earlier. But I was not. It took me years to figure that out. The Army had changed me. Made if difficult to relate to my friends. Made it difficult to relate to the opposite sex. I was acting like I was still in a platoon of 30–40 men, kids really. Finding work was difficult, going back to school turned out to be a disaster, I was in no way prepared for civilian life.
In President Obama’s speech on Friday he said,
If you can save a life in Afghanistan, you can save a life in an ambulance in Wyoming. If you can oversee millions of dollars in assets in Iraq, you can help a business balance its books here at home. Our incredible servicemen and women need to know that America values them not simply for what they can do in uniform, but for what they can do when they come home. We need them to keep making America stronger.
Not all soldiers are medics, not all soldiers are accountants. What about the infantryman or the combat engineer? The skill set I left the Army with was not at all translatable to the civilian world. There is just not a lot of call for grunts in the civilian world. No need for someone who can plot a minefield or to fill out a range card for an M-60 machine gun. Things I still remember how to do to this day...you can take the man out of the Army, but you can never take the Army out of the man.
I was encouraged by the President’s words on transitioning people out of the military,
First, we need to do more to make the transition from military to civilian life easier for our veterans. That’s why I’m directing the Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs to design what we’re calling a “reverse boot camp.” The problem is that right now, we spend months preparing our men and women for life in the military, but we spend much less time preparing them for life after they get out. So we’ll devote more time on the back end to help our veterans learn about everything from benefits to how they can translate their military training into an industry-accepted credential.
The President is correct, months are spent tearing us down and building us back into soldiers, Marines, airmen and sailors. No time is spent putting us back together again. The military culture is far different than the civilian culture and it takes time to reintegrate into civilian society. The President’s proposal is a good start; however, until every veteran is able to find a steady, good paying job, when they get out of the service then it is not a success.
While the President has stated that tax credits are being used to encourage the hiring of veterans. That is not enough and will likely have minimal impact on the jobless rate of our nations veterans. I have stated this in many diaries before. The answer to the problem is massive infrastructure spending. The private sector is not hiring, we know that, they will not hire until the economy improves. Start rebuilding our infrastructure. Veterans willingly laid their lives on the line for our nation once—I don’t think a single one of them would refuse a job that rebuilds our nations infrastructure for the 21st century.