‘Thank You For Your Service’ Means More Than We Think

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Summary: After celebrating Veteran’s Day this past week, we have come across an interview with a soldier, Wes Moore, who served overseas recently and it is a must-see.

Wes Moore recently sat down for an interview about his time in the military to celebrate Veteran’s Day. Moore talks about the sentiment spoken to him by many civilians ever since he returned home from overseas; “Thank you for your service.”

  

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Moore is asked about the sentiment and responds with the following:

“And what was amazing to me was that I very naively 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.”

One of his comments from late in the interview is incredibly telling and poignant:

“When I first came back from Afghanistan, I thought that if you make it back from conflict, then the dangers were all over. I thought that if you made it back from a conflict zone that somehow you could kind of wipe the sweat off your brow and say, “Whew, I’m glad I dodged that one,” 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 you transition 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.”

To read more stories about our country’s veterans, click here.

To all veterans past and present, please use our poll to share your thoughts about Moore’s comments.