Colonel Benjamin D. Conde, USAF, Retired
“Thank you for your service.” What does that really mean to this Veteran that volunteered to serve and fight overseas?
I’ve talked with Vietnam Veterans, many of whom were drafted, and heard their horror stories of returning home to a very unwelcome country full of strangers that expressed their outrage toward them often without understanding even a fraction of what their service entailed. I’m grateful that I didn’t have to experience their painful ordeal.
However, it’s really hard for me to know whether strangers are genuinely expressing their appreciation for my service or simply performing a ritual that requires them to say those five words that we’ve all heard over and over again during the last 22 years since the 9/11 attacks: “Thank you for your service.”
As a volunteer, I found it odd to be thanked for doing something that I really loved doing. To me, the service was a treasure of people that banded together to overcome harrowing challenges and accomplish great things time and again in order to make a difference in this world.
My time in the service gave me confidence that I and my family had devoted a large portion of our lives to something good and right. But as strangers pronounced those five words to me, I was convinced that a large percentage of them had no real understanding of what my service meant to me and my fellow brothers and sisters in arms.
That made me feel like their gratitude was shallow and perfunctory. Don’t get me wrong, there are people out there that are genuinely grateful for their neighbors who are Veterans.
But it’s hard to discern who is who when you hear those five words from strangers over and over again. So, what can we do to demonstrate real gratitude for a Veteran’s service?
Perhaps it starts with attempting to really connect with their story by asking them where or with what unit they served or what their specialty was in the service. Perhaps it starts with caring enough about Airmen, Soldiers, Marines and Sailors to ensure our elected officials continuously and deliberately review the need for them to go to war before authorizing the use of military force (as a note, the 2001 Authorization for Use for Military Force enacted by Congress during the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks is still in place today).
Perhaps it starts with backing the institutions, organizations, and policies designed to support current and future Veterans and their families. Or perhaps it simply starts with treating our neighbors with the grace and love required to work together to make our country a better place and worth their service and sacrifice.
I don’t pretend to know how we can best demonstrate genuine gratitude to our Veterans (as well as all of the public servants who we’ve put in harm’s way). However, after personally seeing how decisions you and I make over here translate to grievous and sometimes fatal wounds servicemen and women receive in places like Helmand, Kandahar, and Baghdad, I’m pretty confident those five words—Thank you for your service–don’t even come remotely close to paying off the account in blood accumulated by our wounded and fallen Veterans or their families.
As for me, I’ll do my best to care for you and your story, and I’ll work harder to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you care for me and mine when you say thank you.
Colonel Benjamin D. Conde, USAF, Retired November 3, 2023.
