This was found on another site I frequent; the author was not listed, but sounds like someone who has been there.
(I added the bolding in the sixth paragraph.)
I remember the day I found out I got into West Point.
My mom actually showed up in the hallway of my high school and waited for me to get out of class. She was bawling her
eyes out and apologizing that she had opened up my admission letter. She wasn’t crying because it had been her
dream for me to go there. She was crying because she knew how hard I’d worked to get in, how much I wanted to attend,
and how much I wanted to be an infantry officer. I was going to get that opportunity.
That same day two of my teachers took me aside and essentially told me the following: “Nick, you’re a smart guy.
You don’t have to join the military. You should go to college, instead.”
I could easily write a tome defending West Point and the military as I did that day, explaining that USMA is an elite
institution, that separate from that it is actually statistically much harder to enlist in the military than it is to get admitted
to college, that serving the nation is a challenge that all able-bodied men should at least consider for a host of reasons,
but I won’t.
What I will say is that when a 16 year-old kid is being told that attending West Point is going to be bad for his future then
there is a dangerous disconnect in America, and entirely too many Americans have no idea what kind of burdens our
military is bearing.
In World War II, 11.2% of the nation served in four years. In Vietnam, 4.3% served in 12 years. Since 2001, only 0.45% of
our population has served in the Global War on Terror. These are unbelievable statistics.
Over time, fewer and fewer people have shouldered more and more of the burden and it is only getting worse. Our troops
were sent to war in Iraq by a Congress consisting of 10% veterans with only one person having a child in the military.
Taxes did not increase to pay for the war. War bonds were not sold. Gas was not regulated. In fact, the average citizen was
asked to sacrifice nothing, and has sacrificed nothing unless they have chosen to out of the goodness of their hearts.
The only people who have sacrificed are the veterans and their families. The volunteers. The people who swore an oath to
defend this nation. You.
You stand there, deployment after deployment and fight on. You’ve lost relationships, spent years of your lives in extreme
conditions, years apart from kids you’ll never get back, and beaten your body in a way that even professional athletes
don’t understand. And you come home to a nation that doesn’t understand. They don’t understand suffering. They
don’t understand sacrifice. They don’t understand that bad people exist. They look at you like you’re a machine – like
something is wrong with you. You are the misguided one – not them. When you get out, you sit in the college classrooms
with political science teachers that discount your opinions on Iraq and Afghanistan because YOU WERE THERE and can’t
understand the “macro” issues they gathered from books with your bias. You watch TV shows where every vet has PTSD and
the violent strain at that. Your Congress is debating your benefits, your retirement, and your pay, while they ask you to
do more.
But the amazing thing about you is that you all know this. You know your country will never pay back what you’ve given up.
You know that the populace at large will never truly understand or appreciate what you have done for them. Hell,
you know that in some circles, you will be thought as less than normal for having worn the uniform. But you do it anyway.
You do what the greatest men and women of this country have done since 1775 – YOU SERVED. Just that decision alone
makes you part of an elite group.
"Never in the field of human conflict has so much been owed by so many to so few." -- Winston Churchill, August 16, 1940
(I added the bolding in the sixth paragraph.)
I remember the day I found out I got into West Point.
My mom actually showed up in the hallway of my high school and waited for me to get out of class. She was bawling her
eyes out and apologizing that she had opened up my admission letter. She wasn’t crying because it had been her
dream for me to go there. She was crying because she knew how hard I’d worked to get in, how much I wanted to attend,
and how much I wanted to be an infantry officer. I was going to get that opportunity.
That same day two of my teachers took me aside and essentially told me the following: “Nick, you’re a smart guy.
You don’t have to join the military. You should go to college, instead.”
I could easily write a tome defending West Point and the military as I did that day, explaining that USMA is an elite
institution, that separate from that it is actually statistically much harder to enlist in the military than it is to get admitted
to college, that serving the nation is a challenge that all able-bodied men should at least consider for a host of reasons,
but I won’t.
What I will say is that when a 16 year-old kid is being told that attending West Point is going to be bad for his future then
there is a dangerous disconnect in America, and entirely too many Americans have no idea what kind of burdens our
military is bearing.
In World War II, 11.2% of the nation served in four years. In Vietnam, 4.3% served in 12 years. Since 2001, only 0.45% of
our population has served in the Global War on Terror. These are unbelievable statistics.
Over time, fewer and fewer people have shouldered more and more of the burden and it is only getting worse. Our troops
were sent to war in Iraq by a Congress consisting of 10% veterans with only one person having a child in the military.
Taxes did not increase to pay for the war. War bonds were not sold. Gas was not regulated. In fact, the average citizen was
asked to sacrifice nothing, and has sacrificed nothing unless they have chosen to out of the goodness of their hearts.
The only people who have sacrificed are the veterans and their families. The volunteers. The people who swore an oath to
defend this nation. You.
You stand there, deployment after deployment and fight on. You’ve lost relationships, spent years of your lives in extreme
conditions, years apart from kids you’ll never get back, and beaten your body in a way that even professional athletes
don’t understand. And you come home to a nation that doesn’t understand. They don’t understand suffering. They
don’t understand sacrifice. They don’t understand that bad people exist. They look at you like you’re a machine – like
something is wrong with you. You are the misguided one – not them. When you get out, you sit in the college classrooms
with political science teachers that discount your opinions on Iraq and Afghanistan because YOU WERE THERE and can’t
understand the “macro” issues they gathered from books with your bias. You watch TV shows where every vet has PTSD and
the violent strain at that. Your Congress is debating your benefits, your retirement, and your pay, while they ask you to
do more.
But the amazing thing about you is that you all know this. You know your country will never pay back what you’ve given up.
You know that the populace at large will never truly understand or appreciate what you have done for them. Hell,
you know that in some circles, you will be thought as less than normal for having worn the uniform. But you do it anyway.
You do what the greatest men and women of this country have done since 1775 – YOU SERVED. Just that decision alone
makes you part of an elite group.
"Never in the field of human conflict has so much been owed by so many to so few." -- Winston Churchill, August 16, 1940
Me, too!
