“I’ve learned over the years people want to approach us and I’m willing to give them that opportunity, and thank them for recognizing the Vietnam veterans because we were not recognized back in the ’60s when I was in the service,” said Perry, a Washington Twp., resident who wore a black bandana identifying him as a veteran of the Vietnam war.
But for retired Army Col. Kathy Platoni who deployed to Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, many Americans are disconnected from soldiers at war and the plight they face when they come back.
The 64-year-old Centerville psychologist, now a volunteer member of the Ohio Military Reserve, said in a keynote address to those gathered too often others are more preoccupied with three days off work during the Memorial Day weekend than remembering those who have gone to war under the nation’s colors.
‘A wide divide’
“For many, military service and sacrifices have been rendered meaningless to the populace at large,” she said, speaking under a tent surrounded by thousands of simple white headstones along rolling fields of green. “There is a wide divide between the citizenry of America and the warrior class charged with protecting them. Most of our country has been largely unaffected by the longest era of war in U.S. history.
“Those of us who wear or who have ever worn the uniform have had our lives toppled and overturned countless times by repeated deployments into the combat zone, watched our brothers and sisters in arms killed and horribly wounded, both physically and psychologically; the latter festering wounds that do not bleed,” said Platoni, a survivor of the 2009 Fort Hood, Texas shooting rampage that killed 13 people and wounded dozens. The gunman, former Army psychiatrist Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, was later convicted and sentenced to death in the attack.
“We are the pit bulls of war that returns to a nation that remains clueless and detached from our indescribable plight and knows only the war they view on television,” Platoni said. “Reintegration into society is a battle yet to be won.”
Fewer than 1 percent
With the end of the military draft more than four decades ago, less than 1 percent of Americans have deployed to the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, she said.
“There is a virtual guarantee that the remaining skeleton force will be forced to bear the highest human toll, deploying over and over again until their initial euphoria about joining up has turned to dust,” she said.
Female soldiers have served in combat zones as their male counterparts, but their contributions often are overlooked, she added.
“Everywhere is the front line,” she said. “Too often overlooked and unacknowledged, we have become a new class of the invisible.”
Despite hardships in military life, Platoni said in an interview she’s stayed in uniform 35 years because of the camaraderie among soldiers and to continue to serve. “That’s ground zero for me,” she said.
Time away has its own hardships. Retired Coast Guard Chief Warrant Officer Jo Wildman, 60, a Troy native, was stationed in 10 states and traveled around the world. “It is difficult,” she said, wearing a blue uniform. “It’s hard on families.”
Full military honors
A year ago, 10 percent of veterans buried at Dayton National Cemetery in recent years had a graveside service with full military honors. Since last Memorial Day, an expanded honor squad has rendered full honors —- including a rifle salute, playing of Taps, and a folded, burial flag — to all veterans, said Dennis J. Adkins, a local judge who created a veterans treatment court in Dayton three years ago.
Volunteers also appear at the service “when no one is there to represent or receive the flag for a veteran,” he said.
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