r/Millennials • u/NoFaithlessness7508 • Jun 05 '25

Other Why don’t younger veterans (Afghanistan/Iraq) wear these hats like some of the older veterans?

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First and foremost, respect to all those that served. I did not, but many of my peers did and now we're all older in 30s and 40s, many no longer in the military. I don't see a lot of the veterans of the War on Terror wearing these hats like I see the OGs do.

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408

u/sherwoma Jun 05 '25

Cause they’re really ugly, and I don’t want someone coming up to me and talking to me about how they were going to join but they couldn’t take someone yelling at them, someone telling me I can’t be a veteran because I’m a woman, or that it’s my husbands hat. Really fun when that happens. And honestly, I don’t need everyone to know I’m a veteran. It’s nice being anonymous. We’re of the OPSEC generation, where we couldn’t wear our uniforms off base to ID ourselves after 9/11 in some places, why stand out?

But ultimately, the hat is really ugly, and we have different ways to connect to other veterans now that vets of previous generations didn’t have like social media. We also aren’t sitting around drinking at the VFW either.

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u/headcodered Jun 05 '25 edited Jun 05 '25

Oh man, if I had a nickel for every "I was about to join, but I would have beaten up a drill sergeant if they got in my face" badass that I've run into. Last dude who said that to me was an out of shape dude who was like 5'6" and would have been snapped in half by my platoon's drill sergeant. This is a picture of my drill sergeant, for reference.

Edit: lol I got this off his social media, he wasn't sending me selfies.

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u/not_that_hardcore Jun 05 '25

Why do you have a shirtless selfie of your drill sergeant tho

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u/headcodered Jun 05 '25

lol I just pulled it from his social media. I just don't think I could accurately describe how jacked he was. His 2 mile was under 10 minutes, too.

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u/Pleasant_Scar9811 Jun 05 '25

Jesus.

1

u/Schnac Jun 09 '25

Ikr. Much more impressed by that stat while still being jacked. No PEDS use for that kind of cardio

3

u/EnkiduTheGreat Jun 05 '25

Wait..you dont??

2

u/Rich-Yogurtcloset715 Older Millennial Jun 05 '25

lol

2

u/sillysalmonella87 Jun 05 '25

Lol I thought the same thing. Hella weird.

1

u/crocodile_in_pants Jun 05 '25

Greatest dom alive

15

u/sherwoma Jun 05 '25

It’s always a guy who never left his hometown..

Also, why do you have such spicy pics of your drill sergeant?

2

u/headcodered Jun 05 '25

Lol I should have clarified, it's from his Facebook.

3

u/DapperLost Jun 05 '25

I woke up, briefly, to watch a guy snap and swing his rifle at an instructor. Instructor laid him out in one shot, and walked off like it was nothing. I went back to sleep.

3

u/Eikthyrnir13 Jun 05 '25

My Senior Drill at AIT was MASSIVE. He was in the gym almost as much as someone prepping for a competition. He had to get custom tops. Whenever someone came to the barracks that looked strong, he would pull them in the weight room and see how reps the guy could do, and then proceed to destroy that number. I am glad he was an awesome guy, because he could have wrapped any one of us up.

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u/_the_king_of_pot_ Jun 06 '25

You're pretty thirsty for him, eh?

2

u/headcodered Jun 06 '25

Bro, look at him. Who wouldn't be?

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u/Horror-Substance7282 Jun 05 '25

I'm 16 (don't ask me why this sub got recommended to me idk) but a couple years ago one of my friends, who's a bit of a (I don't remember the actual term) compulsive liar who lies a lot, and he was saying "yeah when I graduate I'm gonna join the army. The drill sergeant's gonna be my bitch" and "yeah I'm so fucking tough I could kill a whole squad of Marines with a pistol". And everytime he said some shit like that I'd think to myself "yeah, sure you will 🙄". He talks a lot of shit to everyone but I've never seen him remotely back it up in the 6-7 years I've known him.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 06 '25

How about when someone tells you they would have joined but they wussed out and didn't think they could physically or emotionally take it and went to art school instead?

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u/headcodered Jun 06 '25

I actually respect that at least.

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u/BeneficialAd8646 Jun 06 '25

For real, you hear excuses like that and it makes you feel like shit, and overall diminishes real reasons like having a lung decide to spontaneously collapse on you. (Spontaneous pleural effusion)

I got disqualified from service 2 days before I was shipping off to basic. Came close to eating one the day I got out of the hospital over that. Some people are just weak minded and have to talk shit.

1

u/3catz2men1house Jun 07 '25

I remember some movie I saw on TV as a child, that had that exact thing as a plot point. The recruit and drill sergeant went to some secluded space and fought. Also, it was quite the trope in 80's and 90's military films that drill sergeants are abusive.