Finding Hope in the Search for the Veteran Identity

There are currently over one million active-duty personnel across the five branches of the United States military. It is a noble profession and for many, the call to service is deeply rooted in tradition, honor and patriotism.

Although we are proud of the fine men and women who bravely serve, as a society, and in particular within higher education, we often fail to recognize our service members once they leave the service. On our campuses, our veterans wear civilian clothes and our ROTC students wear the uniform. Often, it is those in the uniform we can identify and whom we thank for their service. That can leave our veterans feeling invisible and struggling to find their own unique identity as a veteran. This struggle, combined with the strain of transitioning from active duty to civilian life, can be difficult for many to navigate.

Travis Endicott, a PhD candidate in political science, is actively working to combat this identity struggle among veterans. Originally from Crawfordsville, Indiana, Endicott started his undergraduate career at Purdue University but left early to join the Navy as an Intelligence Specialist. He later returned to school and eventually received a master’s degree in political science from Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI).

So, how does a young Navy veteran from Indiana find himself in the heart of the deep South at the University of Mississippi? Endicott says the University first appeared on his radar when he attended a conference as a master’s student at IUPUI. He attended a panel with two professors from the University of Mississippi’s Political Science Department, noting it was their pleasant demeanor and vast knowledge that inspired him to further research the PhD program at the University of Mississippi.

Endicott made the decision to move to Oxford, Mississippi and further pursue the answer to a question that had been nipping at him for years—just what is the identity of the American veteran?

It might seem simple—to help further define the identity of veterans—but Endicott explained the process has not been without hurdles.

“The first hurdle I had to cross was no one had actually looked at ‘do veterans have a sense of identity of being a veteran’. It seems like a no brainer, because, you know, we go get our free meals on November 11. Or,” he added, “We stand up at baseball games so people can applaud.”

There is so much more to the veteran identity than just being recognized at a sporting event or wearing a hat. For many, it extends to immediate family members and can influence the communities in which they choose to live and the careers they pursue upon completion of service. But it is not without its struggles—with many of those struggles and painful wounds being the ones we cannot see.

Despite never physically serving in a combat zone, Endicott still struggles daily with the guilt that comes from having worked in intelligence and knowing actions he took while based in the United States could have been detrimental for communities halfway across the world.

“When I started looking into the literature about the trauma of combat and the regret associated with it, it was cathartic,” said Endicott. “It was cathartic to read some of these accounts of the guilt associated with their military experience or their combat experience.”

While Endicott’s research is helping us better understand the identity of the American veteran and empathize with those who have been in combat—both physically and mentally—it is also serving as a healing tool for him personally.

In the past decade or so, the conversation surrounding mental health and PTSD has become more mainstream. Most recently, the bipartisan Commander John Scott Hannon Veterans Mental Health Care Improvement Act, introduced by Senators Jerry Moran (R-Kansas) and Jon Tester (D-Montana), was signed into law by President Donald Trump. Aiming to bolster the Department of Veterans Affairs’ (VA) mental health workforce and increase access to care for rural veterans, this law is just one example of the work being done to further destigmatize the perils of mental health in the United States. However, there is still much more work to be done to ensure our veterans have access to and feel comfortable talking about mental health as part of their identity.

Travis Endicott is a PhD Candidate in Political Science at the University of Mississippi. His doctoral research examines how military combat experience affects political behavior and public opinion in military veterans. In order to examine this phenomenon, he takes a multidisciplinary approach that blends the fields of military psychology with political behavior in order to explain how combat experience alters the way that veterans view their political environment.  

He received his master’s degree in Political Science from Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, where his thesis investigated the United States’ grand strategy approaches to global straits and how a thawing of the Arctic could pose a threat to United States National Security around the Bering Strait.