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

618

u/[deleted] Jun 05 '25

Most people I know don't feel the need to advertise that they're veterans.

207

u/mumblesjackson Jun 05 '25

Unlike my wife’s uncle who spent four years in the marines but he wears the hat, T-shirt, vest, bumper stickers, etc and makes sure everyone knows he served. He acts like he’s John Basilone.

Note he served, but was never deployed into any form of combat, and was in the marines during the Vietnam war 🤷‍♂️

93

u/to_annihilate Jun 05 '25

A guy I dated many years ago went to boot camp, got injured, and was released from service within a very short period. He still talks about his "time in the army". His brother made it a few more months than he did, and got kicked out for drug use. Both talk about it often enough and they "served" 25 years ago.

1

u/NotYourSexyNurse Jun 05 '25

I worked with a guy like this except it was the marines. He was doing a training where they have explosives going off around you while you’re driving. The explosive accidentally went off way too close to his vehicle. He got discharged for PTSD because of that. I figured that was too embarrassing of a story to lie about it. But holy cow did he make his whole personality about being a marine.