My grandson has wanted to join his whole life. 1 1/2 years to go. I support him completely.
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serious question on military service
- Thread starter swampbuck62
- Start date
The reality is it puts some skin in the game of the entire country. Essential to the Executive acting rationally. Look at the numbers historically, say at an Ivy League school before and after the draft. The war in Iraq would have never lasted if the people had a say. It was the EXEC BRCH run amok.
Just for the record I am an infantry veteran.
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It's gotten to be a rare event for the youth to make any decision about their lives by the time they graduate school, so I feel that if my boy decides the military is for him I would support it. Can't say I would be overjoyed but I would support it.
Nick T
Nick T
yep. not to be a downer on the whole question but I remember a few things...
JARTGO = Just Another Reason To Get Out. I don't recall any phrase to stay in
I actually had chicken pox when I when in, was told by recruiter to lie at MEPS and say I had acne. Got to boot camp and totally blistered out. Told the CC that I had Chicken pox his reply was that I was allergic to the detergent in the laundry.
Had a 24 hour flu bug one year. went to sick call. was given a shot to stop my dry heaving and an IV was started. I passed out on the exam table. some time later an E7 comes in and starts yelling about WTF am I doing??? IV had drained out, and while I was unconscious my blood had back filled the IV bag. He's yelling at me about not telling anyone about the problem and that I could get an embolism like I was at fault. well it got me stirred up and I got to dry heaving again and accidently kicked him in the balls while puking.
another time I had fallen and stuck my elbow on the deck. Went to base hospital. signed the log at the x ray desk and sat on the waiting couch for 2 hours. X ray tech stops by his duty post and notes the log in time of 2 hours ago and rips me a new asshole to forge the log in time so it doesn't look like I waited as long as I did. Really could not believe the level of care you get in the service.
Deployment to Desert shield and desert storm , our medical doc FALSEFIES all our med recorded because he didn't believe we needed all the shots required for overseas deployment.
later on I was present with a letter to sign saying my radiation record exposure record was wrong and had to be fixed. Turns out a few years ago I had deployed with another sub as a fill in and those asshats had not bothered to read my TLD. instead they were thrown out in the trash and false numbers were recorded. A year later the devices were found in a recycling plant and traced back. It was one of those letters that either you sign it and forget it, or you refuse to sign and are thrown out. ???
drinking, brushing teeth and doing laundry with water contaminated with diesel fuel...actually happened so often we got used to it. Loading food for a mission. Cases of food stamped "not fit for human consumption" and "rejected by air force". we tried to drop as much as we could overboard by accident but its hard to drop entire truckloads.
Guys that had been in for years but not diagnosed as diabetic until they passed out one day. An EKG I had that showed a heart attack history that when I went to the cardiologist he said the leads were hooked up wrong.
the constant issue of guys refusing to go on deployments, just not showing up the day of leaving and going to base Chaplin instead to dodge the deployment. We get back and the guy has a cushy shore job. Guy that pulled his 45 on the XO, holding it to the XOs head as a nuke weps security guard, removed from ship, come back from deployment and he is now an MP with a gun and cop car??? How did he pass that psychological test?
All the near misses that occurred because we had officers that thought they were super heros and did not believe the OP Guidelines were for them. equipment destroyed due to a total lack of competent operators.
One year we were out to sea doing some training, message come in that moral was so low that every ship that could was to pull into any port for a Thanksgiving holiday. So we pull in to home port. No one was allowed off the ship, we had to stay and paint the engine room instead. See the kicker was we couldn't paint it out to sea because of the fumes, but hey now we are in and the hatches are open so now we can paint. As you would assume moral went further down.
We did what we could for each other as we were all in the same mess. But boy it will jade you fast. Makes you a cynical sob. developed a warped sense of humor. When you use the word "civilian" it has the same connotation as the "n" word.
Got some medals. Some buddies for life. Know about stuff that others don't even know exists, but it just isn't apple pie, baseball , and American pride everyday. Whole lotta snafu, fubar and bohica situations/ days. You just become a slave to the government.
JARTGO = Just Another Reason To Get Out. I don't recall any phrase to stay in
I actually had chicken pox when I when in, was told by recruiter to lie at MEPS and say I had acne. Got to boot camp and totally blistered out. Told the CC that I had Chicken pox his reply was that I was allergic to the detergent in the laundry.
Had a 24 hour flu bug one year. went to sick call. was given a shot to stop my dry heaving and an IV was started. I passed out on the exam table. some time later an E7 comes in and starts yelling about WTF am I doing??? IV had drained out, and while I was unconscious my blood had back filled the IV bag. He's yelling at me about not telling anyone about the problem and that I could get an embolism like I was at fault. well it got me stirred up and I got to dry heaving again and accidently kicked him in the balls while puking.
another time I had fallen and stuck my elbow on the deck. Went to base hospital. signed the log at the x ray desk and sat on the waiting couch for 2 hours. X ray tech stops by his duty post and notes the log in time of 2 hours ago and rips me a new asshole to forge the log in time so it doesn't look like I waited as long as I did. Really could not believe the level of care you get in the service.
Deployment to Desert shield and desert storm , our medical doc FALSEFIES all our med recorded because he didn't believe we needed all the shots required for overseas deployment.
later on I was present with a letter to sign saying my radiation record exposure record was wrong and had to be fixed. Turns out a few years ago I had deployed with another sub as a fill in and those asshats had not bothered to read my TLD. instead they were thrown out in the trash and false numbers were recorded. A year later the devices were found in a recycling plant and traced back. It was one of those letters that either you sign it and forget it, or you refuse to sign and are thrown out. ???
drinking, brushing teeth and doing laundry with water contaminated with diesel fuel...actually happened so often we got used to it. Loading food for a mission. Cases of food stamped "not fit for human consumption" and "rejected by air force". we tried to drop as much as we could overboard by accident but its hard to drop entire truckloads.
Guys that had been in for years but not diagnosed as diabetic until they passed out one day. An EKG I had that showed a heart attack history that when I went to the cardiologist he said the leads were hooked up wrong.
the constant issue of guys refusing to go on deployments, just not showing up the day of leaving and going to base Chaplin instead to dodge the deployment. We get back and the guy has a cushy shore job. Guy that pulled his 45 on the XO, holding it to the XOs head as a nuke weps security guard, removed from ship, come back from deployment and he is now an MP with a gun and cop car??? How did he pass that psychological test?
All the near misses that occurred because we had officers that thought they were super heros and did not believe the OP Guidelines were for them. equipment destroyed due to a total lack of competent operators.
One year we were out to sea doing some training, message come in that moral was so low that every ship that could was to pull into any port for a Thanksgiving holiday. So we pull in to home port. No one was allowed off the ship, we had to stay and paint the engine room instead. See the kicker was we couldn't paint it out to sea because of the fumes, but hey now we are in and the hatches are open so now we can paint. As you would assume moral went further down.
We did what we could for each other as we were all in the same mess. But boy it will jade you fast. Makes you a cynical sob. developed a warped sense of humor. When you use the word "civilian" it has the same connotation as the "n" word.
Got some medals. Some buddies for life. Know about stuff that others don't even know exists, but it just isn't apple pie, baseball , and American pride everyday. Whole lotta snafu, fubar and bohica situations/ days. You just become a slave to the government.
I did encourage my son to look into enlisting and would do the same for my grandson. The military is an honorable place to serve and learn. My USAF days were some of the best of my life.
Just do your research, and if it isn't in writing, its not real. Look for good MOS's that aren't going to be cut anytime soon. Cyber Command is getting propped up at Fort Gordon and is a good opportunity. Anything Signal is pretty good as well. Just look for MOS's that can be directly related to a good Civilian job as well.
Tough call. What ever he decides, you have to support. I was in quite a while back but the *****ing still sounds the same today. Lots of things have changed but there's some things that always remain the same. It could be a career maker with the right MOS or ruin your life with the wrong assignment. Many young men were dishonorably discharged in Germany because drugs were readily available and friendships were forged from mutual hate for the system and conditions. Having said all that, if you get a decent MOS and a good branch, the discipline, the challenge and the opportunities will help him later in life even if if this is the worst CINC in history.
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