Eight Feet Deep

If you are going to the Depart­ment of Vet­er­ans Affairs com­plex in Hous­ton begin­ning Wednes­day, July 29, you bet­ter have some offi­cial VA iden­ti­fi­ca­tion — either for employee or patient.

Hous­ton VA offi­cials said in a press release hot off the mojo wire this after­noon that all vehi­cles enter­ing the com­plex will be stopped and occu­pants will be required to show some form of  VA iden­ti­fi­ca­tion. Required is a VA iden­ti­fi­ca­tion badge, VA park­ing tag, vet­eran iden­ti­fi­ca­tion card or an appoint­ment letter.

The mas­sive ID check for the busy com­plex which includes both the VA Regional Office and the Michael E. DeBakey Vet­er­ans Hos­pi­tal is an attempt to reduce unau­tho­rized  park­ing at the cen­ter, which is located in Houston’s busy Texas Med­ical Center.

Any­one who has ever been to the Hous­ton VA hos­pi­tal can appre­ci­ate the dif­fi­culty in find­ing park­ing, espe­cially in the morn­ings. This seems to be a prob­lem at many VA hos­pi­tals. But such an iden­ti­fi­ca­tion check does raise ques­tions. If the check is at the entrances to the cen­ter, what effect will it have on traf­fic, espe­cially those cars headed on Hol­combe Boule­vard in the morn­ings for the many dif­fer­ent Hous­ton hos­pi­tals? What about the vet­eran from Podunk, Texas, who left his appoint­ment let­ter at home, 100 miles away? What about the vet­eran who is going to the VA for the first time to enroll for ser­vices and has no ID, only his proof of mil­i­tary ser­vice? Finally, what about the many vet­er­ans who are not going to see this lit­tle notice because the major­ity of the news media, espe­cially out­side Hous­ton, are not going to report such information?

It kind of makes you won­der. But hey, I did my part. If you have any ques­tions, call the Hous­ton VA police through the main hos­pi­tal num­ber, and good luck get­ting through. It can be quite chal­leng­ing to call some­one at the Hous­ton VA hos­pi­tal. Then again, patience is a nec­es­sary virtue for VA patients.

Con­gress — on occa­sion — passes laws that have some good or at least a good intention.

One would hope, at least, some good inten­tions spurred law­mak­ers to add rid­ers to the Defense Autho­riza­tion bills in 2008 and 2009 which expanded the abil­ity for vet­er­ans who are not in uni­form to ren­der a hand salute.

In the past, only mem­bers of vet­er­ans ser­vice orga­ni­za­tions who wore their organization’s offi­cial head­gear were tra­di­tion­ally allowed to hand salute dur­ing the National Anthem, accord­ing to an arti­cle on Military.com. Vet­er­ans and other civil­ians not in uni­form  — like­wise a tra­di­tion — nor­mally place their right hands over their “hearts” in lieu of a military-style hand salute for the play­ing of the anthem and other flag-related activities.

Thanks to an amend­ment in the 2008 Defense Autho­riza­tion Act retired mil­i­tary mem­bers and vet­er­ans can now give a hand salute when­ever the U.S. flag is raised, low­ered or passes.

A 2009 amend­ment to that fis­cal year’s defense bill allows out-of-uniform mil­i­tary per­son­nel and vet­er­ans to ren­der a hand salute dur­ing the National Anthem.

Now the grow­ing num­ber of peo­ple in the U.S. who have no con­nec­tion what­so­ever with the mil­i­tary and even some vet­er­ans them­selves might won­der why would such a law be passed?

The answer is that there was  obvi­ously some sen­ti­ment among vet­er­ans and mil­i­tary retirees, not to men­tion some of the pow­er­ful vet­er­ans orga­ni­za­tions, for cod­i­fy­ing such a prac­tice. Why? I don’t know. It seems as if the law lacks some prac­ti­cal­ity inso­far as enforce­ment is concerned.

Let’s say you are at a high school foot­ball game. The National Anthem is played and the col­ors are pre­sented on the field by the local Junior ROTC drill team. You, the vet­eran, are wear­ing a big pair of horns on your head because your team is the Long­horns. Now do you do the hand over your chest or give the mil­i­tary hand salute?

Okay, say you give the hand salute. A local cop sees you comes over and starts grilling you about being in civvies and giv­ing a military-style salute. You say it’s legal now. The cop said he never heard any­thing about it. You say: “Trust me.” The cop says: “Okay. I’ll trust you if you can show me some ID prov­ing you are a veteran.”

Now one might think such a request would be easy. But it isn’t nec­es­sar­ily all that simple.

You, the vet­eran with the long­horn hat, spent your four years and got out of the ser­vice. You have your DD-214 form which proves your ser­vice — some­where — although it is not on your “per­son,” as the cop who ques­tioned you might say. You didn’t retire from the ser­vice so you don’t have a mil­i­tary retiree ID card. You don’t go to the VA for health care so you don’t have a VA iden­ti­fi­ca­tion card. You don’t belong to the VFW, Amer­i­can Legion, DAV or any other vet­er­ans orga­ni­za­tion. Basi­cally, you are SOL to use a good old mil­i­tary acronym until you call up the county clerk in the next state where you filed your DD-214 after get­ting out of the ser­vice and ask her to send a copy to the local authorities.

Now that sce­nario about the ball game and the has­sle by the cops and all the trou­ble is a lot of hyper­bole. Heck, I have no idea as to whether there even is any enforce­ment mech­a­nism in laws which let you honor the flag with that sharp, five fin­gers (if you got ‘em) salute with the tip of your index fin­ger next to the right eyebrow.

If I ever gave a mil­i­tary salute, it would prob­a­bly be in a sit­u­a­tion in which other vet­er­ans might do the same thing, say at some kind of vet­er­ans pro­gram or maybe a funeral with mil­i­tary honors.

Per­son­ally, I have always thought the hand salute is pretty cool. It is a sign of respect unlike so many oth­ers, which car­ries with it non-verbal cues aimed toward the object or indi­vid­ual one is saluting.

For instance: You salute an offi­cer you don’t know. You are salut­ing his posi­tion and author­ity. You salute an offi­cer you do know and like. You are say­ing: “Hey, what’s hap­pen­ing bud?” with­out being insub­or­di­nate. You salute an offi­cer you know and don’t like. You are say­ing: “I respect your rank. Now chuck you farley.”

So just remem­ber when you see a civil­ian salut­ing the flag or dur­ing the National Anthem that Con­gress gave this man or woman the right to wear their civil­ian clothes and give a good old military-type hand salute, one each, because of the sac­ri­fice these folks made for their coun­try. As to whether they are really vet­er­ans, I guess you’ll just have to take it on faith. Or ask to see some ID, at your own risk. You cer­tainly wouldn’t want to get gored by those horns.