Military veterans' everyday missions mirror civilians' civic duties

Kirk Boxleitner | Nov 14, 20240

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Last year around this time, the U.S. Census Bureau reported a little more than 16 million living military veterans were in the United States. I’m one of them.

Like civilian society, what’s made so many of our contributions important is how ordinary they’ve been. It’s tempting to fixate on grand gestures, and make no mistake, plenty of veterans have made significant sacrifices to serve their country, even those who are still with us, but what’s just as essential is all the everyday work that so many folks in uniform do, simply to make things livable for their countrymen.

One trait many journalists and military veterans share is that we prefer not to be the focus of the story, so I was reluctant to accept the invitation to write this editorial for Veterans Day, which was extended to me because I served in the U.S. Navy from 1996 through 2003.

And in spite of being deployed overseas as part of two wars — Operation Enduring Freedom from 2001-2002 and Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003 — I don’t consider my service especially exemplary, because my job rate was JO: Journalist.

When I was on board USS Theodore Roosevelt, I was stationed in the Public Affairs Office, putting together the daily shipboard newspaper (“The Rough Rider”) and working with embedded civilian media to get news out to the public.

I also scored more than 5,000 donated comic books for our ship and crew from several publishers, including Marvel and Seattle’s own Fantagraphics, so that was fun.

And when I was stationed at the American Forces Network radio and television stations at both Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni, Japan, and Naval Support Activity Naples, Italy, I worked as a local TV news reporter and an on-base radio disc jockey.

As the real-life Adrian Cronauer told people, no military broadcaster would have been allowed to do what Robin Williams did in “Good Morning Vietnam,” but I did get to do a bit of voice-acting, complete with cartoonish characters and bad celebrity impressions, as part of Morale, Welfare and Recreation campaigns that earned notice from the Navy Office of Information.

We don’t typically think of people “serving their country” by playing top-40 hits as drive-time DJs, but we also don’t often think of people doing so as administrative yeomen, or culinary specialists (the Navy’s official title for its cooks) or disbursing clerks, a field I almost went into, when it looked like there might not be enough openings at the Defense Information School for incoming Navy journalists.

I served alongside folks whose boots wound up pounding the ground in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, but I was never that guy, so I don’t want anyone to think I’m conflating the hardships of my service with theirs, because even when I went to war, aboard an aircraft carrier that spent months at a time parked in the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea, I remained remarkably safe.

But as a sailor, I did my best to keep my fellow service members informed and entertained, and I suppose that’s what I’ve continued to do as a civilian journalist, covering community events and writing arts reviews. I’m a print journalist now, but like any habitual broadcaster, I’m still sending the signal.

And for all the focus on our armed forces’ warfighting, so much of their mission simply boils down to completing all the relatively unremarkable tasks that make sure the system continues to function in safeguarding our nation, just like how all our lives in the civilian world rely on the faithful daily labors of everyone from sanitation to clerical and food service workers in maintaining our quality of life.

I spent the better part of two years in two foreign wars, but when I was in high school, I spent a summer as part of the waitstaff at Friendly’s restaurant in Lawrence, Massachusetts, and of the two, I’ve had more nightmares about being back at Friendly’s than about being back in the Gulf.

Whether it’s military or civilian, every society continues on because the people who are part of it actively make it happen, by protecting what’s vulnerable, fixing what’s broken, taking care of each other and doing what needs to be done, so we can all enjoy better lives.

Many veterans have made exceptional sacrifices, so we should ensure we’re supporting them with more than mere lip service, but pretty much every veteran has done what all of us in the civilian world should be doing, in our own ways, which is to make sure this country remains a place that’s worth fighting for.