The newest generation of veterans isn’t likely to wear hats of the Veterans of Foreign Wars or the American Legion, or sit on a float in a parade.
Neither are younger vets seen often in the red jackets of the Marine Corps League or the leathers of the Freedom Riders.
“I joined [the Marine Corps League] for five years, then quit,” said Jake Fish, a disabled Port Angeles veteran who served in the Marines in 1995-97.
Young veterans aren’t in a position to take part in veterans organizations because they are too busy looking for jobs,
taking college classes and raising their families, Fish said.
With returning veterans as young as 21, many of the veterans of the ongoing Afghanistan War or those who served in the Iraq War had not yet been born when the U.S. veterans returned from Vietnam 40 years ago.
For some, their parents had not yet been born.
The youngest of the 7.3 million living veterans of Vietnam are nearing 60 years old,
2.2 million Korean veterans are approaching 80 and most of the approximate 1.7 million World War II veterans are entering their 90s, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs.
An additional 2.6 million veterans have returned from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, from 2001 through 2013.
The North Olympic Peninsula is a haven for military veterans and retirees, with an estimated population of 20,000 veterans in Clallam and Jefferson counties, according to the Clallam County Veterans Center.
Fish said Vietnam veterans have come out of isolation to help increase awareness of the problems returning war vets have when they make the transition to civilian lives.
However, the young veterans don’t fit with the existing structures, Fish said.
And there’s another problem that many younger veterans feel, he said.
Many of the older veterans no longer can physically handle the more demanding work of running the organizations, so they welcome the younger ones.
“It’s nice [that] veterans open up to each other. But on the flip side, they treat us like we’re the workhorse of the league,” Fish said.
“We’re fresh out of the military — we’re done with that,” he said.
Fish said he initially joined the Marine Corps League and became part of an honor guard that provides military ceremonies for veterans’ burials.
“I didn’t feel like I was helping veterans,” he said.
Now Fish works for the Fleet Reserve Association and helps veterans find the services that they earned but may not have been told about during the discharge process.
Stacey Sutton, a Navy veteran and “veteran navigator” at the Green Alliance for Veterans Education in Port Angeles, spends hours sorting out what Sutton says is the difference between what discharged service members were told and the reality.
At least one young veteran came into the Green Alliance office with serious service-related difficulties but had not filed for veterans’ disability.
“He was told that if he filed for disability, he wouldn’t be eligible for federal jobs,” Sutton said, adding that’s not the case.
Jeffrey Bele, 44, of Port Angeles is among the older of the “young veterans,” having served in the Army from 2003-2010, including tours in Afghanistan in 2006 and Iraq in 2008.
Bele said he is a second-generation disabled veteran.
His father was injured while serving as a sniper in Vietnam, the younger Bele was injured by an improvised explosive device, and now the two share their war experiences.
“It’s very different: The older generation has different things that happened to them and different beliefs. We differ about the reasons behind everything,” Bele said.
Bele said he joined the Veterans of Foreign Wars at Fort Lewis, south of Tacoma, but didn’t stay long as the realities of life as a civilian became more important.
His injuries are obvious, as Bele walks with a cane and has some brain damage from the explosion — which makes finding a civilian job almost impossible.
“People look at me like a leper and say they aren’t hiring at this time,” he said.
Now Bele, too, works with the Fleet Reserve Association, helping other veterans navigate their way though the system.
Marie McDaniel of Port Townsend, who served in the Army Medical Corps from 1997-2003, said she feels fortunate to be one of the few who do fit in with the older veterans.
“Some of my friends who are still in or are younger veterans say they don’t fit in well with the older veterans,” McDaniel said.
There is a definite generation gap between the two groups, she said.
McDaniel joined the Marvin G. Shields Memorial American Legion Post 26 in about 2005 or 2006.
“I feel like we’re family,” she said.
There also is a set of mostly younger veterans who are part of neither group, Fish said.
There are nearly 6.3 million peacetime veterans whose service did not take place during active conflicts.
They include veterans of the Cold War — the years between Korea, Vietnam, and a 25-year stretch of “peacetime” military service before the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Thousands were deployed to El Salvador, Grenada, Panama, Lebanon, Somalia, Bosnia and other conflicts or peacekeeping missions.
During those deployments, 419 American service members died in action, not including the 149 who died in the 1991 Gulf War, and many more were injured, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Those veterans have never been given war veteran status despite their service in locations with active warfare and comrades who died in those conflicts.
Several groups are working to help those groups gain official recognition, Fish said.
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Reporter Arwyn Rice can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5070, or at arwyn.rice@peninsuladailynews.com.
