Essay Sample on Serving the Nation: The Gratifying Duty of Professionals in the Military

Introduction

Pursuing a profession in the military is both challenging and gratifying. It manifests not only selflessness but also an urge to ensure a safe environment for everyone. Being a professional in the military means that one invests every moment in coordinating operations, gathering intelligence, commanding a mission, or mobilizing resources for an activity. In essence, military service shows individuals' readiness to ensure the safety of others while sometimes risking their own in the process. In the United States, various families have offered themselves in service to the military in various capacities, including intelligence, combat, border patrols, foreign missions, and various forms of homeland security. These military families provide critical case studies for assessing the impact of the occupation on a personal and family level. Generally, military service is a dynamic and critical field that requires physical, mental, and social rigor. While various mechanisms have been put in place to ensure that military personnel gets commensurate benefits from their years of service, it is undeniable that some of the social, physical and emotional impacts are long-lived. In the United States, for instance, the Veterans Benefits Administration is mandated to provide for the welfare of veterans such as disability compensation, pensions, home loans, life insurance, and rehabilitation, but this does not resolve the effects of lived experiences of the officers. It is, therefore, instructive to assess the impacts of lived experience on the military personnel including their psychological, social, and financial wellbeing.

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Impact of Military Service on the Individual Serving

Military service provides new social contexts for individuals to develop, improve, or change their behavior patterns. The theory of human behavior development indicates that the environment within which a person lives nurture their behavior patterns, which play a larger role in determining how they are likely to fit within the larger society. Basically, service services a socialization function by motivating the individuals towards a culture that is dominated by discipline, subordination, formalism, responsibility, and group cohesion. Collectively, the military life gives enough time for the officers to develop pro-social skills and personalities that they would otherwise not attain within normal occupations(Spiro, Settersten, & Aldwin, 2015). In this regard, once an individual completes service in the military, they can easily re-enter and integrate with the social system since they have adequately developed the skills of cooperation.

Military service, especially armed veteran activities, can have an adverse effect on their value proposition for life, which effectively increases their propensity to crime and criminal lifestyle. The combat actions that military officers witness and participate in imposing on them a lifelong moral injury. This impact follows the psychological concept of nurture, whereby the soldiers get accustomed to a lifestyle of solving conflicts through aggression and by using arms (Van Schellen, Apel, & Nieuwbeerta, 2012). Eventually, these behavior patterns are likely to be replayed when the military officers re-enter civilian societies. Intuitively, this adverse behavior could result in criminal acts and possible rejection by their communities upon return from service. On the other hand, military service exposes the individuals to actions such as military incursions into areas controlled by rebel groups and terrorists. Over time, they develop stress, trauma, and post-traumatic stress disorder, which cumulatively propel them to criminal acts. The memories of sights of dead people, gunshots, and use of heavy artillery potentially incline the armed military officers to such an aggressive lifestyle even upon return to their societies(Van Schellen, Apel, & Nieuwbeerta, 2012). Furthermore, the military life attenuates social bonds, especially between the individual and the civilian population, since it practically takes them away from their families into an entirely new environment dominated by weapons, havoc, and deaths.

While military service prevents individuals from chronic and cardiovascular illnesses associated with a sedentary lifestyle, it may also cause long-term health effects. Working in the military requires a lot of movement irrespective of the nature of assignment one is given, which means that cumulatively, it keeps them active. Physical exercise reduces the chances of developing health problems such as dementia and cardiovascular diseases later in life. Intuitively, this makes the veterans have a higher advantage than the non-veteran professionals in the military. Conversely, military service has a high likelihood of occupational and health challenges, some of which last a lifetime. Depending on the specific designation, military personnel experience long term health issues related to the rigor of work, physical injury, emotional breakdown, and psychological distress (Spiro, Settersten, & Aldwin, 2015). Even with precautions and personal safety equipment, military personal are highly predisposed to hearing problems due to the blasts of military equipment and incessant gunshot sounds. The non-veterans working I areas that demand the use of physical force in lifting engines and making repairs not only sustain physical injuries but may also develop musculoskeletal problems (Williamson, Harwood, Greenberg, Stevelink & Greenberg, 2019). These challenges superimpose to pose a severe challenge for the veterans. In most cases, the close companions to the military officers find it difficult to cope with their health challenges. Without the necessary social support from the close family members, an individual progressively feels isolated, possibly develops depression, and enters into a phase of depression.

In most cases, military training and combat assignments at an early age reduce the chances of an individual attaining education in other areas, which then reduces their chances of getting new professional jobs upon re-entry into society. While it is undeniable that military life nurtures a culture of respect to authority, loyalty, and strict adherence to commands, it, in most cases, does not incorporate the building of skills in other disciplines (Spiro, Settersten & Aldwin, 2015). This means that it sets an individual strictly within their missions and jobs. Upon completion of a mission, it becomes difficult for a returnee military officer to reembark on civilian life and get engaged in other activities. The lack of training compounded with the psychological and physical health complications from military assignments potentially render a returnee veteran unhelpful in the society (Spiro, Settersten & Aldwin, 2015). Conspicuously, veterans who are the commissioned officers and those with a college education are highly likely to adjust to civilian lifestyle easily. They can quickly get recruited into various other areas, thus keeping them engaged. There is a correlation between inadequate training of military personnel in other regions, post-military re-entry, reduced social wellbeing, and a feeling of exclusion.

Conclusion

Military service has various effects on an individual's social, psychological, physical, and economic wellbeing. These effects range from influencing behavior development, a propensity to crime, the ability to return to civilian lifestyle, social acceptance, and traumatizing experiences. The level and intensity of these impacts depend on the nature of assignments given during service and the length of time one serves. Based on the evident long term effects of military service, it is clear that the military should make adjustments that integrate possible welfare effects of service on the individuals. An institution such as the Veterans Benefits Administration should be revamped so that it delivers effective services. It should anticipate and aggregate net effects of service on an individual as a primary approach to limiting adverse impacts.

References

Spiro III, A., Settersten, R. A., & Aldwin, C. M. (2015). Long-term outcomes of military service in aging and the life course: A positive re-envisioning. The Gerontologist, 56(1), 5-13. https://doi.org/10.1093/geront/gnv093

Van Schellen, M., Apel, R., & Nieuwbeerta, P. (2012). The impact of military service on criminal offending over the life course: evidence from a Dutch conviction cohort. Journal of Experimental Criminology, 8(2), 135-164. DOI 10.1007/s11292-012-9140-5.

Williamson, V., Harwood, H., Greenberg, K., Stevelink, S. A., & Greenberg, N. (2019). Impact of military service on physical health later in life: a qualitative study of geriatric UK veterans and non-veterans. BMJ Open, 9(7), e028189. http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2018-028189.