The new greatest generation: Post-Sept. 11 veterans reflect after decade of war and sacrifice

For Junior Swift, it's the standoff with armed bandits in the Iraqi desert. For John Gilman, it's the mortar shells that rained down on the Afghanistan border with disquieting regularity.

And, seven years later, Wayne Bowen is still pulled from sleep by the harrowing thoughts of a fellow soldier -- and good friend -- whose body was ripped apart by the actions of a suicide bomber.

After war, the memories linger.

Today, on Veterans Day, those recollections will perhaps linger a bit longer for the servicemen and women who will be honored and celebrated across the country with parades, ceremonies and moments of silence.

Some may offer quiet tribute to a fellow brother-in-arms who served in World War II or a grandfather who fought in the Great War that preceded it. Others might shake the hand of a Vietnam vet and thank him for his service.

But there are others now, of course: Add to their numbers the 2.3 million relatively new veterans who have joined their ranks after a decade of war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

They, too, will be saluted this Veterans Day, a holiday created after the end of World War I -- which came on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month in 1918.

Some have called these military men and women "the new greatest generation."

One member of that generation is Junior Swift, who served in Tallil Air Base in Iraq as a member of the Missouri National Guard from December 2003 to March 2005. Instead of celebrating his children's birthdays, he was sleeping in a tent at night while his unit worked to construct 84 miles of road south of Baghdad by day.

They worked to clear away roadside bombs, too, and trained Iraqi police officers. Swift, 38, of Jackson, also was a driver for a high-ranking officer.

"It was actually a very interesting experience doing all the things we did while we were there," Swift said.

But the thing he remembers most took place on his first day in Iraq. Swift went out with a platoon sergeant with members of the unit that they were replacing. They were getting oriented to their new surroundings.

As they drove, they happened upon a truck on the side of the road, giving Swift his first look at Iraqis holding machine guns.

"I didn't know who they were," Swift said. "But, to me, if they're not Americans and they got guns, they're the enemy."

The American soldiers noticed the band of Iraqis were stripping down a truck and dismantling it for parts, Swift said. After approaching the Iraqi men, Swift suddenly found himself in the middle of a standoff.

"They had their weapons pointed at us, and ours were pointed at them," Swift said. "That was my very first day and my very first experience. ... That was the thing about Iraq. You just didn't know what was out there."

The situation was defused, and no one was hurt.

But going to war is not a decision Swift regrets. He joined because his father, grandfather and great-grandfather had served in the military. Swift just wanted to do his part.

He tries to honor other veterans in his own way. Swift is vice president of the Student Veteran Organization at Southeast Missouri State University, a group of about eight veteran members.

"But Veterans Day is just another day," Swift said. "Getting thanked would be nice. But I did it because it was something I wanted to do."

Some want to go more than once. Spc. John Gilman, also of Jackson, returned in March from a yearlong deployment in Afghanistan, working along the Pakistani border to help train the Afghanistan Border Patrol.

The border patrol helps ensure that members of the Taliban don't make their way into the country, often bringing weapons and money with them for nefarious purposes.

Gilman, 27, said he was awakened many a morning by the sounds of rockets and mortar shells overhead. But most of his time there he considers a learning experience. He worked mostly with the people of Afghanistan, he said, a group that he found wonderfully hospitable.

He's going again in July, this time with a unit on a mission clearing routes from improvised explosive devices. He understands it's dangerous.

'A wake-up call'

While he's been home, he married his longtime girlfriend, but he says he still feels the call of duty.

"I saw 9/11 as a wake-up call," Gilman said. "They need my help and they need me to step up. If not me, then who?"

Gilman has been in the National Guard for five years. It was only after he served overseas that Veterans Day took on a special meaning for him. Before his deployment, he didn't feel like he had done anything to deserve special recognition.

Last year, when people thanked him for his service, he actually felt like he had served.

"I felt something," he said. "I have a different mindset about it. For the first time, I feel like I can be called a veteran now. I just feel so grateful that I've been able to do my part, to serve in some small way."

But not all wars are the same. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are different in some ways than other wars throughout history, said Wayne Bowen, chairman of the department of history at Southeast Missouri State University.

There seemed to be a concerted effort by many civilian Americans to distance their perspective on the merits of the wars from their attitudes about service members.

At the beginning of both the war in Vietnam and the war on terror, both enjoyed wide public support. Later, Vietnam was conflict despised by some, and some soldiers returning home from that conflict were treated badly.

Support for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan waned in the years after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, too, but few Americans seemed to blame the soldiers, Bowen said. He attributes that to the fact that, unlike in Vietnam, there is no draft.

"The Occupy Wall Street types can be against the war, but it's not going to affect them," he said. "They're not going to be drafted. It's not as personal anymore. The people who enlist know what they're getting into."

Bowen knew what he was getting into when he enlisted in the U.S. Army Reserves. His enlistment eventually took him to Iraq in 2004, where he served as a civil affairs officer in charge of higher education and antiquities in the provinces of Nineveh, Dohuk and Erbil.

While there, he managed reconstruction projects, served as an intermediary between Iraqi educational leaders and U.S. forces and assisted in the search for weapons of mass destruction. Bowen has also published books about the military, including one about his time in Iraq.

Bowen also wasn't surprised to hear about soldiers volunteering for multiple deployments. It's not uncommon in these wars, he said.

"There are a lot of unpleasant things about war, including the fact that people shoot at you," he said. "But there's also comradeship, the sense of doing something important."

For him, the hardest part was the loss of a friend. The memories still give him bad dreams. When Bowen came home, a friend and fellow soldier volunteered to stay behind in Iraq. By the time Bowen stepped on U.S. soil, he learned that his friend had been killed by a suicide bomber.

He admits it has changed him.

"Anyone who says they came back from Iraq unchanged perhaps doesn't have an understanding of themselves," Bowen said. "They might be better. They might be worse. But they're changed."

He also knows that Veterans Day celebrations tend to be small. He knows not a lot of people go. That's OK, he said. People shouldn't be made to feel guilty if they don't participate.

But he would like Americans to pause for a moment or two. Perhaps at 11 o'clock.

"Just think and pray about the people still serving," Bowen said. "I think that's enough."

smoyers@semissourian.com

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