What Things Were Difficult to Communicate to Family and Friends About Your Military Service? Login & Share to Win!

The reason I volunteered to go to Vietnam. My family and friends just did not understand. I felt my country needed me and I was willing to go.

Having to answer questions about what I did, as some of my job duties involved handling classified material. Coming up with vague non-specifics was frustrating.

I was serving in the most highly secreat unit in the military FBI was doing background checks with all my friends , teachers, employers and neighbors and my family did not know what I was doing most assumed I had committed crime I could not tell them it was training for doing or even my location!

That when I had to go when and where told (ordered) to.

The difficult to communicate things from my military experiences are the importance in having a sense of urgency (at the right times) and loyalty. A sense of urgency is needed to survive in todays society and loyalty is a character trait only the military can teach (the right way).

Friends and family found it difficult to understand what I did while serving in Korea. I was attached to the JSA, located within the DMZ, and no one understood "demilitarized zone". They didn't understand what a member of the military was doing in a "demilitarized" portion of Korea.

Like countless others have mentioned the camaraderie. Sense of belonging. Moreover the feelings and emotions r/t PTSD causing experiences.

Communicating what seeing and being in war is like, how it feels and how that effected me and my perception of things in general and specifically. I needed to share that to be understood. What resulted was my father making it an argument and putting a loaded pistol to my head, declaring “This is my house!” It blew my mind. I had considered it as my home, a place to be safe and cared for. So I moved out and terminated all contact with blood family, sometimes finding a sense of family with strangers on street corners, and began 10 years of wandering, hitchhiking between Alaska and Panama, in search of myself and for a people I felt and they felt I was part of. I found myself but gave up on the rest, ultimately taking a job as night security at a clothing optional hot spring resort, where I met my present wife, the forth. I am happily married to for the best 36 years of my life.

Something only us single people can understand: I spent a year deployed to Iraq and no one in my family knew, not a one.  I was stationed in Japan already, could route my phone calls & mail, they'd never know otherwise.  Kept it a secret for two years after I returned.  Why? Because my family... parents & siblings, are non-entities to the DoD, there's nothing they do for them until I'm dead.  Why make them worry day & night for a year, it's not like they lived on base or in a military community that they could have turned to for support.

the difficulty explaining a 24 hour clock reference, chow meaning all three meals of the day, TDY as being on temporary duty at another location other than my permanent base. the only other persons who'd understand me were my brother and brother-in-law.