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

Most of it. Hard to connect with someone who hasn't served.
People always ask the wring questions. Meaning the ones I don't want to talk about.

the camaraderie its just not the same in the civilian world

I was Army Security Agency so there was a lot I couldn’t talk about, even with my wife. She was understanding and supportive with others family and friends.

I was pretty lucky because I was third generation Army and my dad understood what I’d gone through. My mom never pushed she just asked if I’d done my duty and let it go at that.

Mostly my job as a 68W and the rules I have to follow under the Geneva convention. It is hard for them to understand that I would have to treat enemies if they were wounded and that I'm not supposed to be a main combatant.

I have a moral injury from Vietnam service which only God can deliver me from. Can you understand that???

Why I joined instead of college (I wanted to serve, grow up a bit, travel long term).

I found it difficult to get across what it is truly like to be in the military to anyone who had not served. Most people have no idea that things like laws are different in the military. We not only have to live by the laws of the country that all civilians do, but also have a second set of laws on top of that with the UCMJ. And the UCMJ can be difficult for people to understand in that it can be used in many different ways. An example is that in the 1970s a LT in the US Army decided he wanted to work to modify haircut regulations since military people were easily identified and often ostracized because of their shorter military haircut. This was the Vietnam era, and so the military members were sometimes attacked for simply being military (I was myself). So this LT fought the regs, and lined up a large cadre of exceptional lawyers to prove his case was just to get the regs changed. When the military trial began, the charge was simply "Failure to Obey a Lawful Order." Nothing about the haircut regs. It destroyed their case, and nothing happened except that a good LT was forced out of service.

The fact that many times I had no choice in what days or hours I was working. My husband didn't want to believe I hadn't done anything to be put on graveyard shift for 12 hours a day for six months. It was just a rotating duty everyone eventually had to do. But he was an abusive controlling ass, he died just six months after I got out while we were divorcing.

We don’t beg for ears and deployments. We go if called.