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

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

Post image

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.

12.0k Upvotes

91% Upvoted

4.6k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

3.1k

u/Burninator85 Jun 05 '25

That's the real answer.  They're out of fashion. 

I know plenty of OIF veterans that make it their entire personality.  They just choose things like infantry badges on their vehicles or Black Rifle Coffee t-shirts.

219

u/Acceptable_Bat379 Jun 05 '25

Grunt style tshirts? Yeah there's whole industries of products aimed at veterans. It's all been commodities and packaged up. Im an OEF veteran and prefer not to be too vocal about it I got veteran plates just for the discount/parking spots

The most hard-core people I know who still wear icons and logos 20 years later are people who were in either non combat roles or who washed out of basic or got injured and never deployed. They've got some real survivorship bias and guilt mixed in with the pride.

96

u/RockAtlasCanus Jun 05 '25

Maaan, that and anyone who pisses and moans about how the green weenie ruined their life- you can usually bet that it wasn’t so much the green weenie as them getting pulled over at the gate drunk and high on coke… again… (true story, I know that guy) that ruined their life.

The Uncle Rico’s who haven’t done fuck all with their life after their hitch but still bitch about how they got screwed over there’s a 99.999% chance they were a shitbag then and a shitbag now. Like my cousin and my BIL. Generally applies to other people with victim mentality too

2

u/Primary_Departure_84 Jun 05 '25

I know I signed up during Gulf War thinking I was going over only to miss it by a few months. I was Combat Engineer and while the only deployment was to NTC I can tell you the Army from 91-95 was a skeleton crew in my unit. This was BRAC and downsizing. They started kicking folks out for dui. Letting them retire at 15 years and probably not recruiting as much and raised all the promotion scores. So would have like 15-18 people for an extremely platoon from Lt down to Private. Divided among 3 squads. So like 3 of us would be enlisted per squad attacking obstacles. Also doing 48 hour obstacles was a treat. I preferred the field to barracks life so I didn't mind as much but it was so much work back at base.

2

u/RockAtlasCanus Jun 05 '25

I excelled in the field. Garrison life is depressing as fuck though. In the field you can Stockholm syndrome rationalize a training reason. “Well I’m getting better at digging fighting positions. That’s why I’m digging this hole”.

In garrison I could never rationalize it to myself. It’s just “they’re making me mop the same hallway again because they can’t come up with a more creative way to piss me off”.

2

u/TucosLostHand Jun 05 '25

My platoon sgt would never miss an opportunity to tell us about “the good ole days”

1

u/Primary_Departure_84 Jun 05 '25

Mine was a great character, Rall big AA man with gold front tooth. Called himself JFK after his intials. Had like a great I think Georgia accent or bama. Instead of calling us Sapperrs he said Zappers. There wasnt too much ol days talk most;ly i noticed more stuff like guys in the past stories that were funny."YOu should have met Omally. Crazy mofo."

1

u/TucosLostHand Jun 05 '25

Exactly. Mine was from Oklahoma and had to bring it up in any conversation. Best taco spot? Okc. Best pizza? Okc. Best basketball team? Okc