Sam Elliott, 81, Opens Up About His Military Past—and the Guilt He Carried for Decades

Sam Elliott is an Oscar-nominated actor known for his roles in Taylor Sheridan’s 1883 and Landman. Long before becoming a cowboy on TV, the 81-year-old was actually in the military and has since become a very outspoken advocate for veterans. To learn more about Elliott’s career in the military, including why he has some long-lasting guilt about his time in the service, keep scrolling! 

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Sam Elliott’s military service before fame

In the late 1960s, Elliot joined the California Air National Guard’s 146th Airlift Wing, an experience that he says helped him learn discipline, camaraderie and perseverance. Not everyone was on board with his decision to enlist, with Elliott telling Marc Maron on his podcast WTF, “My mom said, ‘Please don’t.’ This was in ‘67,”—at the peak of the Vietnam War draft.

Even so, Elliott joined the National Guard, but was never actually deployed, something that he said caused him a lot of guilt over the years. 

“Those guys that signed up because they felt a call to duty … and then they came home and got spit on and all that sh-t, that put me off it,” he told Bang Showbiz in April of 2022. “But I always felt guilty about it, and then I got an opportunity to do a movie called We Were Soldiers. I played a guy who served in four different military conflicts … and then I got an opportunity to go see the [Vietnam Memorial] on the fourth of July … I’ve always felt guilty about the fact that I didn’t go. I got into the National Guard, and I was one of the lucky ones.”

And according to Elliott, that guilt never really went away—until he met a man at the Vietnam Memorial several years later. 

“[At the memorial,] this guy in a wheelchair rolls over and he goes, ‘Hey Elliott, get over it, man. If I could’ve gotten into the National Guard, I’d have been there, pal. Get over it,’” he said on the WTF podcast. “And I did, but it took a guy in a wheelchair to tell me that it was okay.” 

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How Sam Elliott became a vocal advocate for veterans

Even though he was never deployed, Elliott is an active supporter of veteran causes. In 2019, at a National Memorial Day concert, he read D-Day survivor and World War II hero Sgt. Ray Lambert’s harrowing account of what happened during the war as a way to honor both him and other veterans. 

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“It was total confusion,” Elliott read of Sgt. Lambert’s account. “Shells exploding, boats blowing up, people yelling because they couldn’t hear anything, machine gun bullets hitting the water all around you, the roar of the boats coming in. It’s like you’re all alone in the world of a million people because you’re concentrating on what you have to do. I just kept going. I was thinking of only one thing—getting to the men who needed me.” 

“People who have never been in a war should understand what soldiers give up. The guys we left on Omaha Beach never had a chance to live the lives they dreamed of. A day hasn’t gone by when I haven’t prayed for the men we lost and their families,” Sgt. Lambert’s account continued. “I still wake up at night sometimes thinking about the guys. Every man that walked into those machine guns and that artillery fire on Omaha Beach that day. Every man was a hero. What kind of person would I be if I didn’t tell their stories?”

Elliott has also become a spokesperson for USAA—the financial services group that provides insurance, banking and investment products exclusively to U.S. military members, veterans and their families. With his own experience in the military, Elliott is proud to represent the organization, often drawing on his service as inspiration for many of his iconic cowboy roles.