For the folks who went through the training, got to know their comrades as brothers and sisters, and then going through combat and possibly having to say their final farewells to the ones who never made it back, the uniform and patches become personal. And on tours of duty they see some of the most fucked up things going on in the world like ISIS barbarity in the Mideast and it is a clear realization that the uniform is what is keeping our homes and streets from being visited by that same hell they are fighting to keep at bay.
