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This Remembrance Day, let’s remember that veterans don’t all look the same – lest we erase the diversity of experiences in our forces.
Kelly S. Thompson is a former captain in the Canadian Armed Forces and the North Bay, Ont.-based author of Girls Need Not Apply: Field Notes From the Forces.
A trip to an insurance agent is often tedious, but rarely a matter of existential anxiety. Yet, there I was, in 2012, sitting sheepishly in one of Vancouver’s provincial insurance offices, the walls sporting posters urging us to drive safely and the staff appearing typically disengaged – and my nerves were showing in my tense face, mottled from crying all morning.
My purpose there was simple – applying for a veteran’s licence plate, which allowed for free parking in the city suburbs. I have always been a sucker for free parking. But the reason for my stress was much more complicated: I had been a civilian for all of nine months, and even after eight years of being Captain Thompson, I was convinced I hadn’t earned the designation.
I wasn’t yet 30 years old; I hadn’t seen war. I didn’t even feel entitled to the depression that led to my medical military release; my colleagues had been forced to hurt other people and seen friends torn apart on battlefields, so who was I to feel this way? An overwhelming feeling of inadequacy clawed at my throat whenever anyone called me a veteran. My dad, on the other hand, was a real veteran, in my eyes: silvery hair, wrinkled skin and a chest full of war medals from his peacekeeping service in the Golan. So when he encouraged me to obtain the form to have my military service validated for the licence plate, I decided to gird myself and make the drive down to this office.
It didn’t quite go as planned.
The insurance lady looked down at the form, her neon fingernails glowing under the office’s fluorescent lights. She snapped her gum. “You don’t look like a veteran,” she said.
“Oh no?” I tried to keep my voice even, pretending I hadn’t had my former officer status questioned a million times before. “And what does a veteran look like?”
“You know, old. Like, Second World War kind of old. And you’re a girl.” That last bit was said with sass, as though my gender and military service could not square with what she was reading on the paper in her hand.
Emboldened, I raised an eyebrow while I signed here and there on the paperwork she handed back to me, my loopy cursive signature apparently unbecoming of soldierness. “I’m a woman, actually. Not a girl.”
The agent pounded her date stamp with a thwack, dug through her filing cabinet of poppy-painted metal plates and handed me one, shrugging, as I held its weight in my hand.
She didn’t need to tell me that I don’t fit the military mould: I knew it from the day I enrolled as an 18-year-old, just after 9/11. Among my friends, my passion for magenta lipstick is renowned, as are my funky haircuts, my dedication to art and my love of story. Artsy-fartsy was the term my dad used to describe me, as did many of my male military colleagues. And even though I come from a place of privilege, with my white skin and cisgender expression, even I struggle with the veteran label when I stare back at the mirror. What I see doesn’t compute with what society expects me to be.
Just a month before the fiasco at the insurance office, I’d felt impossibly out of place while paying respects during my first civilian Remembrance Day. My beret slipped awkwardly on my new civilian hairstyle, and I could see firsthand, compared with my former comrades on the other side, how much I didn’t belong. I wondered about the other veterans who stood next to me at the cenotaph, sporting their own medals and military headwear. We spanned all ages, races, gender expressions and other experiences.
We, the invisible veterans
---------------- --------------------------------------------------
Much more of this well written article including a variety of ex-military voices at :
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-we-are-the-invisible-the-problem-with-how-we-understand-our-veterans/
Kelly S. Thompson is a former captain in the Canadian Armed Forces and the North Bay, Ont.-based author of Girls Need Not Apply: Field Notes From the Forces.
A trip to an insurance agent is often tedious, but rarely a matter of existential anxiety. Yet, there I was, in 2012, sitting sheepishly in one of Vancouver’s provincial insurance offices, the walls sporting posters urging us to drive safely and the staff appearing typically disengaged – and my nerves were showing in my tense face, mottled from crying all morning.
My purpose there was simple – applying for a veteran’s licence plate, which allowed for free parking in the city suburbs. I have always been a sucker for free parking. But the reason for my stress was much more complicated: I had been a civilian for all of nine months, and even after eight years of being Captain Thompson, I was convinced I hadn’t earned the designation.
I wasn’t yet 30 years old; I hadn’t seen war. I didn’t even feel entitled to the depression that led to my medical military release; my colleagues had been forced to hurt other people and seen friends torn apart on battlefields, so who was I to feel this way? An overwhelming feeling of inadequacy clawed at my throat whenever anyone called me a veteran. My dad, on the other hand, was a real veteran, in my eyes: silvery hair, wrinkled skin and a chest full of war medals from his peacekeeping service in the Golan. So when he encouraged me to obtain the form to have my military service validated for the licence plate, I decided to gird myself and make the drive down to this office.
It didn’t quite go as planned.
The insurance lady looked down at the form, her neon fingernails glowing under the office’s fluorescent lights. She snapped her gum. “You don’t look like a veteran,” she said.
“Oh no?” I tried to keep my voice even, pretending I hadn’t had my former officer status questioned a million times before. “And what does a veteran look like?”
“You know, old. Like, Second World War kind of old. And you’re a girl.” That last bit was said with sass, as though my gender and military service could not square with what she was reading on the paper in her hand.
Emboldened, I raised an eyebrow while I signed here and there on the paperwork she handed back to me, my loopy cursive signature apparently unbecoming of soldierness. “I’m a woman, actually. Not a girl.”
The agent pounded her date stamp with a thwack, dug through her filing cabinet of poppy-painted metal plates and handed me one, shrugging, as I held its weight in my hand.
She didn’t need to tell me that I don’t fit the military mould: I knew it from the day I enrolled as an 18-year-old, just after 9/11. Among my friends, my passion for magenta lipstick is renowned, as are my funky haircuts, my dedication to art and my love of story. Artsy-fartsy was the term my dad used to describe me, as did many of my male military colleagues. And even though I come from a place of privilege, with my white skin and cisgender expression, even I struggle with the veteran label when I stare back at the mirror. What I see doesn’t compute with what society expects me to be.
Just a month before the fiasco at the insurance office, I’d felt impossibly out of place while paying respects during my first civilian Remembrance Day. My beret slipped awkwardly on my new civilian hairstyle, and I could see firsthand, compared with my former comrades on the other side, how much I didn’t belong. I wondered about the other veterans who stood next to me at the cenotaph, sporting their own medals and military headwear. We spanned all ages, races, gender expressions and other experiences.
We, the invisible veterans
---------------- --------------------------------------------------
Much more of this well written article including a variety of ex-military voices at :
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-we-are-the-invisible-the-problem-with-how-we-understand-our-veterans/
