"...As to the OP... ust because someone did not see combat, they did give up a chunk of their life. They disrupted and put on hold their own plans, their job or education and their family. I have very good reason to say that I would not ever want to demean or take away from the experience of combat but, giving up several years of your life is a huge sacrifice in its self."
And yet, to give someone who spent their service-time behind the wheel of a semi-tractor-trailer truck or a personnel desk - the way that I did - thousands of miles from the war-zone - the same honors and labeling as someone who served in a War Ops theater or who actually saw combat, does a grave disservice to those who risked or lost more.
Heckuva quandry, but, not everyone can win at the honors-game, just for showing up.
I (and most non-combat vets) I know are perfectly content to categorize ourselves as -Era Vets rather than War-Vets for the reasons outlined earlier in the thread.
We 'others' did, indeed, put our hat into the ring as well, during wartime, but were not chosen to be sent into the war-zone, and, of course, we proudly wear the appellation 'Veteran', and get nearly the same benefits and honors that combat-vets do, but it is fitting and proper and just to give them (combat vets) that slight distinguishing boost in appellation and the rendering of higher-order honors, in order to recognize their greater risk and sacrifice.
Or so my own thinking goes, and that of most of the several dozen veterans that I am reasonably-well acquainted with.
In the final analysis, adherence to this widely accepted and voluntary classification system between veterans, may be more a matter of a personal sense of right-and-wrong, and honor, than it is anything else, even if it is fairly soundly backed by a variety of veterans organizations and, to some modest extent, the VA and Congress themselves.
Your mileage may vary.
