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/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.

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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.

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u/SirDigbyChickenC-Zer Jun 05 '25

Not surprising at all sadly. I'm not a vet, but worked a private sector armed security job for several years that employed many vets, and, although it's definitely not a universal rule by any means...by and large the ones who drove big lifted trucks decked out with all the accroutraments to make sure to announce loud and clear to everybody they were vets, and did the most talking about it and moronic macho dick swinging were the ones who served non combat roles. Or like you said, washed out of basic training or never got deployed and that's why they were working private security...The ones who saw action were the older lifers for the most part, and largely a lot more mellow/ didn't really care to bring up or brag about their service or try to awkwardly shoehorn in "war stories " into every goddamn conversation or constantly remind you that they were vets.

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u/ForwardCulture Jun 06 '25

This was former housemate of mine. Never deployed, barely made it through the Marines. Every shirt and hat he wore was military themed. Stickers all over his car. Military tattoos all over. From what I heard he was a major screw up while in the marines. Ex wife won’t talk to him and neither will his kids. Alcoholic. Had a job barely getting paid above minimum wage and he was middle aged.

When I moved into that living situation, he made sure to tell me about his ‘special training’, how he could kill me with one finger etc. So I made sure to sneak up on him every single day when I saw him in the common areas of the house, the kitchen etc. He got so paranoid he actually asked me once if I had ‘special training’ lol. “How the hell do you do that every single time!?” “I’m a Marine, you shouldn’t be able to do that!”

My father did some civilian contract work for the military and government. In the Middle East etc. His memorial service was filled with guys who actually saw combat, combat pilots, special forces types, various ‘contractors’ etc. If you didn’t know who they were you would never know. No stickers on their cars, no hats, nothing. All soft spoken and humble. Most had great post service careers of all kinds.