Stuck in traffic, waiting behind some big truck burning oil, I stop fuming at the fumes long enough to read the license plate. Not the license plate holder, not a vanity plate boasting RICH1, but a message on the plate itself, beside the letters and numbers.

"Former POW," proclaims the license plate. So now I know more about this guy in the truck in front of me than I know about, say, most of my neighbors. Then I start to notice other license-plates-as-personal-history, announcing that the driver is a WWII Veteran, a Vietnam Veteran, or a Pearl Harbor Survivor. All veterans of foreign wars, played out in the towns and ditches of foreign lands.

What about the veterans of domestic wars?

I close my eyes, imagining a street filled with cars bearing license plates revealing that the driver is a Gang Rape Survivor Former Domestic Violence Victim, Raped by My Former Husband/Minister/Basketball Coach/Therapist, Tortured by Grandfather and Uncles, Former Prisoner of a Violent, Alcoholic Family. My story could fill several plates. It would read Incest & Torture Survivor/Former Prisoner of a Psychotic, Alcoholic Family/Gang Rape Survivor. Would people read my disclosure and feel proud of the battles I've fought? Would they be sympathetic, imagining my heroic suffering at the hands of the enemy?

Most likely they'd turn away, horrified, unwilling to acknowledge my non-fiction horror story, the story shared by millions of other women and men. We are veterans of the domestic wars, the wars that aren't called a national emergency, the wars with no proud monuments.

Our cities are infested with monuments and shrapnel from the foreign wars' victorious--most parks are populated by pigeon-decorated bronze statues of dead brave guys wielding a sword, loading a cannon, riding a horse or a tank. And every town has a VFW hall--a place where Veterans of Foreign Wars congregate and drink to memories of past battles. Of course, there's also the big, bright medical facility on the hill--the VA Medical Center, where 7,000 vets of real wars get medical and psych services.

Where do Veterans of Domestic Wars gather? Emergency rooms, streets, and doorways (many homeless women are fleeing domestic violence, and shelters in King County turn away 10 out of every 11 women who seek safety), or the morgue.

The lucky ones make it to a shelter, but unlike the VFW hall, these veterans can use the safety of the shelter for only about a month. Then they're on the street, back home, or searching for an apartment that won't cost the entire AFDC check. Oops, has this veteran used AFDC services for a total of five years before this current disaster? Too bad, lady, get a job! Hey, I hear the VFW is looking for a barmaid. And if you land in jail, maybe you can get a job making license plates for those other veterans, the real warriors, who wear their wounds on the bumpers of their sport utility vehicles.

I'm not deluding myself into thinking that veterans of foreign wars have an easy existence, particularly the thousands of homeless vets who live in shelters and doorways and under tarps in the greenbelts. And it was a couple of military nurses who recognized the similarities between the flashbacks of Vietnam vets and the sudden, remembered terrors of women who were raped by their fathers or grandfathers, uncles or priests. Post-traumatic stress is a battle scar of all kinds of veterans.

But the veterans of domestic wars, past and present, fight invisible unacknowledged battles. Oh, there are bruises and broken bones and screams and threats--but there are few reporters following the action with TV crews, and many people like me who don't know what to say or do in the face of someone else's dirty little war.

What kind of society would acknowledge the veterans of domestic wars with adequate safety and care, let alone advertise the reality of domestic wars on license plates? But then, what kind of society throws money at massive sports stadiums and parking garages, while hundreds of women are turned away from shelters, back to the minefield called home, or out to the uncertain terrors of the streets?

Remember what you're commemorating on Veterans Day.

--Valerie Jean