CommonLit+_+How+to+talk+to+veterans+about+war
Name: Class:
"Woman in green and brown camou7age
uniform" by RDNE stock project is licensed
under CC0.
How to talk to veterans about war
By Wes Moore
2014
Wes Moore is the governor of Maryland and a veteran of the U.S. War in Afghanistan. In this Ted
Talk, he speaks about his experience and the experiences of other veterans.
As you read, take notes on how paragraphs 11 and 12 connect to the text’s central idea.
I’m excited to be here to speak about vets,
because I didn’t join the Army because I
wanted to go to war. I didn’t join the Army
because I had a lust or a need to go overseas
and Mght. Frankly, I joined the Army because
college is really d— expensive, and they were
going to help with that, and I joined the Army
because it was what I knew, and it was what I
knew that I thought I could do well.
I didn’t come from a military family. I’m not a
military brat. No one in my family ever had
joined the military at all, and how I Mrst got
introduced to the military was when I was 13
years old and I got sent away to military
school, because my mother had been
threatening me with this idea of military
school ever since I was eight years old.
I had some issues when I was coming up, and
my mother would always tell me, she’s like, “You know, if you don’t get this together, I’m going
to send you to military school.” And I’d look at her, and I’d say, “Mommy, I’ll work harder.” And
then when I was nine years old, she started giving me brochures to show me she wasn’t playing
around, so I’d look at the brochures, and I’m like, “Okay, Mommy, I can see you’re serious, and
I’ll work harder.” And then when I was 10 and 11, my behavior just kept on getting worse. I was
on academic and disciplinary probation before I hit double digits, and I Mrst felt handcuLs on
my wrists when I was 11 years old. And so when I was 13 years old, my mother came up to me,
and she was like, “I’m not going to do this anymore. I’m going to send you to military school.”
And I looked at her, and I said, “Mommy, I can see you’re upset, and I’m going to work harder.”
And she was like, “No, you’re going next week.” And that was how I Mrst got introduced to this
whole idea of the military, because she thought this was a good idea.
I had to disagree with her wholeheartedly when I Mrst showed up there, because literally 1 in the
[1]
1
Mrst four days, I had already run away Mve times from this school. They had these big black
gates that surrounded the school, and every time they would turn their backs, I would just
simply run out of the black gates and take them up on their oLer that if we don’t want to be
there, we can leave at any time. So I just said, “Well, if that’s the case, then I’d like to leave.”
(Laughter) And it never worked. And I kept on getting lost.
But then eventually, after staying there for a little while, and after the end of that Mrst year at
this military school, I realized that I actually was growing up. I realized the things that I enjoyed
about this school and the thing that I enjoyed about the structure was something that I’d never
found before: the fact that I Mnally felt like I was part of something bigger, part of a team, and it
actually mattered to people that I was there, the fact that leadership wasn’t just a punchline
there, but that it was a real, actually core part of the entire experience. And so when it was time
for me to actually Mnish up high school, I started thinking about what I wanted to do, and just
like probably most students, had no idea what that meant or what I wanted to do. And I
thought about the people who I respected and admired. I thought about a lot of the people, in
particular a lot of the men, in my life who I looked up to. They all happened to wear the uniform
of the United States of America, so for me, the question and the answer really became pretty
easy. The question of what I wanted to do was Mlled in very quickly with saying, I guess I’ll be an
Army oOcer.
So the Army then went through this process and they trained me up, and when I say I didn’t join
the Army because I wanted to go to war, the truth is, I joined in 1996. There really wasn’t a
whole lot going on. I didn’t ever feel like I was in danger. When I went to my mom, I Mrst joined
the Army when I was 17 years old, so I literally needed parental permission to join the Army, so
I kind of gave the paperwork to my mom, and she just assumed it was kind of like military
school. She was like, “Well, it was good for him before, so I guess I’ll just let him keep doing it,”
having no idea that the paperwork that she was signing was actually signing her son up to
become an Army oOcer. And I went through the process, and again the whole time still just
thinking, this is great, maybe I’ll serve on a weekend, or two weeks during the year, do drill, and
then a couple years after I signed up, a couple years after my mother signed those papers, the
whole world changed. And after 9/11, there was an entirely new context 2 about the occupation
that I chose. When I Mrst joined, I never joined to Mght, but now that I was in, this is exactly what
was now going to happen.
And I thought about so much about the soldiers who I eventually had to end up leading. I
remember when we Mrst, right after 9/11, three weeks after 9/11, I was on a plane heading
overseas, but I wasn’t heading overseas with the military, I was heading overseas because I got
a scholarship to go overseas. I received the scholarship to go overseas and to go study and live
overseas, and I was living in England and that was interesting, but at the same time, the same
people who I was training with, the same soldiers that I went through all my training with, and
[5]
1. Literally (adverb) in fact; really
2. Context (noun) the circumstances in which an event occurs
2
we prepared for war, they were now actually heading over to it. They were now about to Mnd
themselves in the middle of places the fact is the vast majority of people, the vast majority of us
as we were training, couldn’t even point out on a map. I spent a couple years Mnishing graduate
school, and the whole entire time while I’m sitting there in buildings at Oxford that were literally
built hundreds of years before the United States was even founded, and I’m sitting there talking
to dons 3 about the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, and how that inNuenced the start of
World War I, where the entire time my heart and my head were on my soldiers who were now
throwing on Kevlars and grabbing their Nak vests and Mguring out how exactly do I change a
round or how exactly do I clean a machine gun in the darkness. That was the new reality.
By the time I Mnished that up and I rejoined my military unit and we were getting ready to
deploy 4 to Afghanistan, there were soldiers in my unit who were now on their second and third
deployments before I even had my Mrst. I remember walking out with my unit for the Mrst time,
and when you join the Army and you go through a combat tour, everyone looks at your
shoulder, because on your shoulder is your combat patch. And so immediately as you meet
people, you shake their hand, and then your eyes go to their shoulder, because you want to see
where did they serve, or what unit did they serve with? And I was the only person walking
around with a bare shoulder, and it burned every time someone stared at it.
But you get a chance to talk to your soldiers, and you ask them why did they sign up. I signed
up because college was expensive. A lot of my soldiers signed up for completely diLerent
reasons. They signed up because of a sense of obligation. They signed up because they were
angry and they wanted to do something about it. They signed up because their family said this
was important. They signed up because they wanted some form of revenge. They signed for a
whole collection of diLerent reasons. And now we all found ourselves overseas Mghting in these
conNicts.
And what was amazing to me was that I very naively 5 started hearing this statement that I never
fully understood, because right after 9/11, you start hearing this idea where people come up to
you and they say, “Well, thank you for your service.” And I just kind of followed in and started
saying the same things to all my soldiers. This is even before I deployed. But I really had no idea
what that even meant. I just said it because it sounded right. I said it because it sounded like
the right thing to say to people who had served overseas. “Thank you for your service.” But I
had no idea what the context was or what that even, what it even meant to the people who
heard it.
When I Mrst came back from Afghanistan, I thought that if you make it back from conNict, then
the dangers were all over. I thought that if you made it back from a conNict zone that somehow
you could kind of wipe the sweat oL your brow and say, “Whew, I’m glad I dodged that one,”
[10]
3. a senior professor at an English university
4. to move, position, or distribute so as to make ready or eLective for a particular purpose
5. Naively (adverb) done in a way that shows a lack of knowledge, experience, or judgment
3
without understanding that for so many people, as they come back home, the war keeps going.
It keeps playing out in all of our minds. It plays out in all of our memories. It plays out in all of
our emotions. Please forgive us if we don’t like being in big crowds. Please forgive us when we
spend one week in a place that has 100 percent light discipline, because you’re not allowed to
walk around with white lights, because if anything has a white light, it can be seen from miles
away, versus if you use little green or little blue lights, they cannot be seen from far away. So
please forgive us if out of nowhere, we go from having 100 percent light discipline to then a
week later being back in the middle of Times Square, and we have a diOcult time adjusting to
that. Please forgive us when you transition 6 back to a family who has completely been
maneuvering without you, and now when you come back, it’s not that easy to fall back into a
sense of normality, because the whole normal has changed.
I remember when I came back, I wanted to talk to people. I wanted people to ask me about my
experiences. I wanted people to come up to me and tell me, “What did you do?” I wanted
people to come up to me and tell me, “What was it like? What was the food like? What was the
experience like? How are you doing?” And the only questions I got from people was, “Did you
shoot anybody?” And those were the ones who were even curious enough to say anything.
Because sometimes there’s this fear and there’s this apprehension that if I say anything, I’m
afraid I’ll oLend, or I’m afraid I’ll trigger something, so the common default is just saying
nothing. The problem with that is then it feels like your service was not even acknowledged, like
no one even cared. “Thank you for your service,” and we move on. What I wanted to better
understand was what’s behind that, and why “thank you for your service” isn’t enough. The fact
is, we have literally 2.6 million men and women who are veterans of Iraq or Afghanistan who
are all amongst us. Sometimes we know who they are, sometimes we don’t, but there is that
feeling, the shared experience, the shared bond where we know that that experience and that
chapter of our life, while it might be closed, it’s still not over.
We think about “thank you for your service,” and people say, “So what does ‘thank you for your
service’ mean to you?” Well, “Thank you for your service” means to me, it means acknowledging
our stories, asking us who we are, understanding the strength that so many people, so many
people who we serve with, have, and why that service means so much. “Thank you for your
service” means acknowledging the fact that just because we’ve now come home and we’ve
taken oL the uniform does not mean our larger service to this country is somehow over. The
fact is, there’s still a tremendous amount that can be oLered and can be given. When I look at
people like our friend Taylor Urruela, who in Iraq loses his leg, had two big dreams in his life.
One was to be a soldier. The other was to be a baseball player. He loses his leg in Iraq. He
comes back and instead of deciding that, well, now since I’ve lost my leg, that second dream is
over, he decides that he still has that dream of playing baseball, and he starts this group called
VETSports, which now works with veterans all over the country and uses sports as a way of
healing. People like Tammy Duckworth, who was a helicopter pilot and with the helicopter that
she was Nying, you need to use both your hands and also your legs to steer, and her helicopter
6. Transition (verb) to change from one thing to another
4
"How to Talk to Veterans About War" from TED by Wes Moore. Copyright © 2014 by TED. This text is
licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.
Unless otherwise noted, this content is licensed under the CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license
gets hit, and she’s trying to steer the chopper, but the chopper’s not reacting to her instructions
and to her commands. She’s trying to land the chopper safely, but the chopper doesn’t land
safely, and the reason it’s not landing safely is because it’s not responding to the commands
that her legs are giving because her legs were blown oL. She barely survives. Medics come and
they save her life, but then as she’s doing her recuperation 7 back at home, she realizes that,
“My job’s still not done.” And now she uses her voice as a Congresswoman from Illinois to Mght
and advocate for a collection of issues to include veterans issues.
We signed up because we love this country we represent. We signed up because we believe in
the idea and we believe in the people to our left and to our right. And the only thing we then
ask is that “thank you for your service” needs to be more than just a quote break, that “thank
you for your service” means honestly digging in to the people who have stepped up simply
because they were asked to, and what that means for us not just now, not just during combat
operations, but long after the last vehicle has left and after the last shot has been taken.
These are the people who I served with, and these are the people who I honor. So thank you for
your service.
(Applause)
[15]
7. Recuperation (noun) the process of recovering from an illness or injury, or the completed
state of recovery
5