Thankless

With Thanksgiving just a few days away, it may seem like an inopportune occasion to express my ingratitude to all those people, most of whom don't know me, who found it necessary on Veterans Day to thank me for my service. But I cannot escape the feeling that circumstances are conspiring, even as I write this, against me. And that I may not have much more time to put down my true feelings on this most sensitive, for a disabled veteran serviceman, of subjects. But here goes.

When I first joined the Navy in May 1988, Ronald Reagan was president and we were on course to achieving a 600-ship fleet. The Navy had three recruit training centers, in Great Lakes, Illinois, San Diego, and Orlando, Florida, which is where I did my basic training.

That was thirty years ago, and a great deal has changed since then. For one thing, there is no longer a Soviet Union to oppose us, making such an enormous military obsolete. Two of the RTCs have long since closed. Even Desert Storm, which inspired so much pride in the military in 1990, ended with a resounding fart, and hundreds of thousands of servicemen who were considered vitally necessary just months before were handed their pink slips. It was called downsizing, but it was more like a fire sale. Recruiting quotas dropped to almost nothing for awhile.

Then 9/11 happened, and people were volunteering in droves again - principally to give them a license to go off and kill Arabs. And boy did we ever. Even conservative estimates counted more than 100,000 Iraqis killed after the 2003 invasion, but later studies count as many as a half million. We didn't kill them all (they were killing one another long before we showed up), but the invasion accelerated the rate of killings. 4,804 Americans and coalition forces were also killed.

Currently 0.4 % of Americans are serving in the military, but 7.3 percent of all living Americans have served in the military at some point in their lives (thank you FiveThirtyEight). Our last four presidents didn't serve in the military. Three of them dodged the draft to avoid service in Vietnam. Fewer people see the need to serve. Some are open about it. I was interviewed for a job in 2007 in which the young man interviewing me, upon learning of my 11 ½ years of service, told me to my face that he didn't see the point of serving one's country. Since I needed the job, I didn't put the stupid punk in his place.

I have been living in self-inflicted exile in the Philippines on a 30 % Veterans Disability rating for more than a decade. That's currently less than $500 a month. For awhile it was less than $400. Myself and a woman and her children. I never meant this to happen, but that it did has been an enduring miracle. That miracle has been brought down to earth. I was informed in August that I was being audited. Then I was informed that, since 2003, I was overpaid $37 a month the first year all the way up to $49 a month this year. Not a staggering amount, but it adds up to my owing the U.S. government more than $7,000. (My first thought was: this is how our president is trying to pay for his Big Tax Cut, by going after defenseless veterans like me.) How do I repay it? I wrote and sent them a letter explaining my total dependence on my monthly benefits check - not to persuade them to defer my debt, but to convince them that deducting a major part of it would precipitate the end of my life here among the tinkling palms. And by "the end" I don't mean a get-out-of-jail-free card.

So now, whenever I hear the phrase "Thank you for your service" I sometimes detect sincerity behind it. It includes thanks for the sacrifice - for not just fighting America's wars, but standing sentry duty all over the globe so that they could sleep safe and sound. And to them my response is a warm "You're welcome." Anytime. My pleasure. But most of the time what I hear in those words is someone who feels obliged to say it, that in saying it they are fulfilling some duty of their own. What I actually hear, behind the practiced, clichéd phrase, is "Thank you for relieving me of the duty of serving my country." And to that funny kind of gratitude I have to respond with "No thanks."