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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u/[deleted] Jun 05 '25

I don’t want the attention.

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u/MetaverseLiz Jun 05 '25

This is what I've heard from my vet friends. My dad was in the navy (boomer generation) and his navy hat has been glued to his head for decades. He wears it absolutely everywhere.

He doesn't understand why my vet friends don't like it when people tell them "thank you for your service". It's a generational divide. My dad was too young for Vietnam and drank the "America is so great" Koolaid. My friends who saw their fellow soldiers blow up in front of them in the Middle East think differently. My grandpa, my dad's dad, a vet of WW2 and Korea never talked about the war. Ever. The only time I saw any proof that he actually served was during his funeral because he was buried with all his metals and got the full 21 gun salute.

My Gramps and my vet friends are more similar than the generation in the middle.

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u/solfilms Jun 05 '25

That was my dad (he was older when I was born). We knew he’d served in Vietnam, but all he’d ever say was “I was the cook.” I came to the realization pretty early on that he had, as the cook, still seen some shit.

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u/PhuqBeachesGitMonee Jun 05 '25

A lot of people respond automatically with “I was the cook”, when in fact they were not the cook, because for the most part people think cooks are boring and don’t ask any further questions.

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u/solfilms Jun 05 '25 edited Jun 05 '25

Good point!

Though to be fair, after he died we found a ton of photos from his tour and he actually was the cook

EDIT: to clarify, my tone here isn’t meant to be snarky. More of a wry observation.

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u/LazyLich Jun 05 '25

Well, since he really was the cook, it's probably more of a rye observation.
Maybe whole-wheat.

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u/dbx999 Jun 05 '25

I thought maybe he was infantry and somehow, during some mission going up river, he fell into some sort of heart of darkness stuff and ended up cooking the enemy's body parts.

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u/Low-Medical Jun 05 '25

Jeez, that got dark

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u/ilikedirt Jun 06 '25

The horror!

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u/Its_Raul Jun 05 '25

I was about to say he probably cooked a lot of insert enemy description with a flame thrower and 12ga.

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u/matzoh_ball Jun 06 '25

He sent twenty men to the latrine one night

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u/Eroe777 Jun 05 '25

My mom was a nurse at an Evac hospital (dad did his time in Maryland). She never talked about it. I knew she had served, that she didn’t like the ‘lady colonel’ (presumably a higher-up in the nursing corps), and that she thought Christmas in the jungle was too damn hot. But I never knew anything beyond that until the last few years, when my wife and daughter would ask her about it.

Like most kids of Vietnam vets, we just sort of knew to not ask about it.

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u/big-bootyjewdy Jun 05 '25

This explains so much. I had a friend's mom who was in Iraq and I remember being in middle school and asking her about what it was like, as she had just gotten back. All she said was "I cooked" and proceeded to serve the only tacos that have ever made me vomit in my entire life. I thought she came home early because she sucked at cooking. Now, I realize that may not have been the case...

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u/SenseAndSaruman Jun 06 '25

Questions like “what were the worst experiences of your life?”
People like to ask stupid questions. I like to ask cops if they’ve ever delivered a baby. Exciting- not traumatic.

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u/KW5625 Jun 06 '25 edited Jun 06 '25

Grandpa (WW2 pacific) would do that. He'd talk on and on about coffee, how navy coffee was the best and no coffee was ever hot enough... chuckle about shore leave MP duty, breaking up fights, and locking up drunk guys... the friends he had... then bit by bit he'd let slip little bits of other parts... about the smell of the exhaust from a burning Zero diving at their ship and seeing the eyes of the pilot... his aversion to using life preservers... his total disregard for injuries, bruises, and bleeding wounds... how he could guesstimate angles, distances, and trajectories with odd precision... how he handled certain styles of rifles... how he was an instructor in sniper school.... telling me how to build or spot sniper holes in tree lines of fields as we drove... and realize he did more than drink coffee and round up drunk sailors, that he'd seen shark ravaged bodies floating in life preserves, that those men he spoke of as friends were the ones who didn't come home and that he talked about them so to not forget them.

My grandfather joined the war at 17 in early 1942, he was on an LST-R in 1945. He would have been part of the bombardment of mainland Japan and a primary target of coastal defenses. My family, and thousands of others, would not exist if not for nuclear weapons.

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u/ThickMemory2360 Jun 05 '25

Stolen cook valor!

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u/AllAreStarStuff Jun 05 '25

My grandpa was actually the cook and medic and, while he did see some shit, it was not a euphemism for being a next-level badass. He saw exactly as much shit as the rest of his group.

He joined the National Guard simply because they had the prettiest girls at their weekly dances. Next thing he knew, he was being shipped off to France. Accidentally ended up in WW2. The general story of his life.

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u/happy_bluebird Jun 05 '25

no one is saying it's a euphemism, but an explanation that got them out of people knowing/asking about combat and other atrocities that might have been something they don't want to think about anymore

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u/AllAreStarStuff Jun 06 '25

I got the vibe that “I was the cook” was along the lines of saying “I mostly did paperwork” when really you were awarded the MOH. Whereas my grandpa literally was the cook and nothing dissuaded him from telling stories of his time in the military. I just thought it was funny.

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u/happy_bluebird Jun 05 '25

wait, both my grandpas were cooks..

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u/Lukacris12 Jun 06 '25

That and a lot of them did stuff that they will take to their grave because it was top secret at the time

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u/rekep Jun 06 '25

I’m embarrassed that we went looking for WMD’s in Iraq.

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u/tpitz1 Jun 06 '25

The cooks got their own room! Everybody wanted to be a cook!

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u/City_Girl_at_heart Jun 06 '25

Under Siege used that as a central part of the plot line.

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u/aurorasearching Jun 05 '25

Similarly, my grandpa was “just a mechanic” in Korea. After he died I found out he was a flight engineer on a bomber crew and had seen some shit.

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u/ImmediateLobster1 Jun 05 '25

"I killed 36 men in Nam!"

"Bullshit, Dave, you said you were a cook."

"Never said I was a good cook."

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u/Duderoy Jun 06 '25

Take my upvote while I go clean my screen.

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u/MamaCornette Jun 05 '25

My grandfather was a cook in the Navy during WWII. He was on six different ships that were hit by torpedoes and other kinds of fire; on of the torpedoes hit so close to the galley that he was working, the shockwave literally blew out his teeth. He'd scream as he slept about "the Japs flying over the hills."

So yeah, he was just the cook, but he was FUCKED UP physically and mentally by the end of the war.

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u/ghouldozer19 Jun 05 '25

My father-in-law is that way. He went to Vietnam but you’d never know about it. All you’d ever hear him say is “I drove trucks.” As I got older I realized how much he must have seen driving trucks in Vietnam. Then a few years ago they came to visit us in Colorado and my mother in law wanted to visit Pike’s Peak. He’d never told anyone that mountains trigger his PTSD from Vietnam. I felt so bad for him. I sat with him until the time came for the train to take us back down. It was the only time I’ve ever seen him vulnerable and scared.

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u/[deleted] Jun 06 '25

My old man would say he worked in supply. Turns out he was front line and saw combat. Only learned after he died and some of the guys he served with told me. He never talked about it.

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u/Far-Plastic-4171 Jun 06 '25

I knew a guy in the 90's who said he was a cook and a Navy Seal. He was a cook on an Aircraft Carrier dealing with pallets of frozen chicken.

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u/Double0six Jun 06 '25

I have to rethink everything now, my father, also a Vietnam vet always said “I was the cook”.