… when they’re not actually fighting a war that is (and once they’ve finished basic training and are doing the job proper).
When I was in and stationed in Germany, I maintained air traffic control equipment. It was a working airfield, and so it was important that the air traffic control facilities worked. It was a truly awesome job. I loved every minute of it. Then I was transferred to a tactical unit in Texas. Twice a year, we got to camping for a week, and I got to maintain tactical equipment. That was fun. The other 50 weeks of the year weren’t fun. Make-work. That 2.5 ton truck is assigned to me? Time to repack the wheel bearings! At least I got to teach myself MS-Access in the guise of organizing the maintenance pubs. All in all, that job was boring, and there was nothing to do other than pass the hours by until it was time to go home. The economy was good, I left, and have a truly excellent career, to which I really must credit the Army. If I’d stayed on a working airfield my entire career, I’d be in my initial retirement planning stages right now! Although the quality of life would be much less (but I’d not know what I was missing).
That’s cool, Balthisar - thanks for the info! I hope other people also add their stories, I’d like to hear them.
Training, field exercises (i.e. mock battles), planning/debriefing field exercises, equipment maintenance, inspections, and PT.
ok, interesting. How many times a week do you have to do a run? How far?
What you do all day depends on what your job is. You might be in an office from 9-5 every day. If that’s the case, your work day starts at about 0600. Your first formation, around 0630. You do Physical Training until about 0800. Then you go take a shower and put your uniform on. Then you go to your office at 0900. Take an hour for lunch. Go home at 1700.
If you’re a mechanic, you spend your day in the motor pool fixing shit. If you’re a cook, you spend your day in the DFAC standing around making sure nobody puts their hats on the tables, bossing around the civilian cooks, and making sure everything is running smooth.
If you’re an MP, you get in your car and patrol. If you’re a nurse, or a dental tech, then you work in the clinic all day… It all just depends on your job.
How often you go on a run, also depends on your job. Hell, I see POGs playing “frisbee footbal” for PT all the time. Fatasses.
Trained.
Prepared.
Trained.
Prepared.
Being a soldier in peacetime is mostly about training. You advance in your career by training - by taking courses, achieving qualifications, participating in exercises.
I was in a combat support unit - a field unit, but not front life infantry or armor. Electronic warfare, actually. We spent many months every year in training courses, which combined school and field work. In summers you had big exercises. That stuff was interspersed with vehicle maintenance, smaller training efforts (like target practice) and ceremonial duties.
That would be typical of most combat (infantry, armor, reconnaissance) and combat support (artillery, signals, EW, army aviation, etc.) units. **Bear_Nenno **describes what would be typical of what we called service support units - members of the armed forces who were soldiers but generally did not practice actual soldiering, like clerks, doctors, nurses, etc.
Here was my schedule when in the Army. For reference I was a signal guy(25F doing a 25B job) in a Patriot Unit.
0630 - 0730 First formation and PT. 4 days a week. Run 3 of those days. Anywhere from 2 - 6 miles. The other day of PT would be pushups situps, or a unit favorite “Brick PT” which was grab a cinder block, and lift it over your head 100 times. Hold it out at arms length for 60 seconds. Put it on the ground and use it as a step machine.
0730 - 0900 Personal Time/Breakfast. Get home, shower, eat, and come back in. If you lived in the baracks this was easy. Some people that lived off post would just shower at the gym, and bring breakfast or eat at the dinning facility. I was 15 minutes off post so would run home.
0900 - 1130 Work formation and work. Depending on the day this consisted of prevenitive maintnance of trucks (Monday), installing parts ordered on Monday (Wendsday), or for me fixing computers Tues. and Fri.
1130 - 1300 Lunch. I would go home, and eat there.
1300 - 1630 Afternoon work and end of day formation. Finish what needed to get done. Being in the S6 Automations shop(fix the units computers) I always had work to do.
1630 - End of day. Go home, get ready to do it again.
Thursdays were an exception. No PT. Show up for Sgt. Time Training. This would be a first formation at 0730 already having breakfast. Depending on what traiing we were getting what we had to wear. We would train on anything from React to Direct/Indirect Fire, Map Reading, or how to fix a computer. This would last till noon. We would then be released for lunch. Back in the office at 1300 - 1330. And finish the day as normal. Friday in our unit was “Air Attack Time” and we would get released at 1400.
Also for awhile I was in the Special POPs program. This is a program for anyone who either fails their PT test, or is overweight. I was overweight. Every afternoon at 1600 I would have formation at the gym, and we would workout for 60 to 90 minutes. As I was one of the more senior soldier in the group I would usually be assigned to take the runners for a run. I enjoy running so this was perfect for me. I would run everyone out about 30 to 45 minutes and then let me run back at their own pace. I would run out for another 15 minutes or so, and try to catch people walking instead of running.
We would do field exersizes where we all showed up with all our gear at about 0400 sign out weapons. Get our trucks loaded, and go out to the middle of nowhere. Play soldier for a week or two, sometimes up to a month. Come back, and spend a week cleaning/repairing gear, and putting it away.
My schedule now as a contractor is show up at 0700 for my ride into work. Work till 2000 get a ride back home. 5 days a week. Get paid more than 4 times what I was getting in the Army.
-Otanx
(Note: As an Israeli, I’m talking about the IDF here)
As others have already mentioned, This depends immensely on your posting. When I was in the military, I was doing a desk job at Air Force HQ, as a statistician/analyst/programmer in Operations Research, so pretty much I showed up at 8, did my job, went home at 5 or when I was satisfied I was on-track with all my current assignments. A lot like being in a salaried job in civvie hi-tech, really… which is what I studied for in college (ROTC-equivalent,) and is where I ended up when I quit the military. Aside from a few things that made it a bit different, it was basically “my first job.”
There was very little difference for me, personally, whether it was complete peace time or close to all-out war (1981, when we took missiles from Iraq as part of GW-1,) since most of my work was doing long-term (and I mean long term – looking 5-10 years forwards, sometimes) research and analysis.
As part of my work I would participate in meetings with the Operations Planning units to help flesh out Advance Operational Plans (plans for what should be done if certain situations materialize in the future).
And, sometimes, help make immediate plans for hitting a specific target in near-real time, but the latter was not the norm.
Field units (combat and combat support) are very different of course, with a far more rigid schedule, spanning more hours of the day. And yes, as already mentioned, the mostly do training, exercises, Combat Readiness and PT. But I can’t really speak to those, as I was never in the field beyond doing my Basic, NCO and Officer training courses.
As a general (heh) rule of thumb, everyone does PT in the morning, takes an hour or so to clean up and eat, then either does their job all day or trains to do their job.
From a reservist point of view:
Saturday and Sunday, formation is at 0730. No breakfast- you have to eat before that. Then we do some sort of training. It’s usually a Warrior Task like treating a certain type of wound or disassembling a weapon or performing some sort of squad maneuver. Then we’d eat lunch and train some more. If there were a mission or something coming up (and there usually is), we’d prepare for that by either packing up essential gear or, say, getting the vehicles ready to go. We’re dismissed at 1630 unless we’re overnighting somewhere for something. There’s no PT…no time.
A lot less of this than you would think.
Gah… *waaaay *to late to edit.
- 1991 !!! :smack: :o
I was going to say, how old are you?
Wow, thanks, I was always curious. I appreciate all the different people posting, too. Good thread, mutant moose!
Still *waaaaay *older than I’d like to be, even with that decade lopped off! :eek: 
I think robby was in submarines so probably about 50 feet. 
When I was on active duty I was an enlisted observer/navigator/scout in scout helicopters (hence my user name). PT at 6am. We would run 3 times a week usually, 2-6 miles. 2 times a week we would do muscle failure. Sometimes we had to get to work earlier so there would be no PT for that day. Sometimes I would have a training mission scheduled. Sometimes I wouldn’t. I always had to be prepared to fly. There were regularly scheduled training, general soldier tasks and such. We had one day where all the enlisted would not do their jobs and just do common soldier tasks. While I was in Germany we would go to the field once a month for about 5 days. In the summer we would go for about a month to shoot and tactical training. While I was in Fort Hood we would get deployed to the National Training Center at least once a year for a month at a time.
Then there were the “red cycles”. All units cycled through and got hit with the red cycle from time to time. When you were on red cycle the unit would get hit with all kinds of bullshit like roadside trash pickup and guard duties. Everyone hated red cycle.
Right. I wasn’t actually a soldier. I was an Army brat (father/stepfather in the Army), and later served in the Navy.
My original answer still stands, though. People have elaborated on the specifics of their jobs, but most of them basically boil down to one of the categories I listed above.
Never in the U.S. military, but have worked around them my whole career.
If you’re an officer assigned to the Pentagon (or enlisted-- far fewer of those there, however), with few exceptions your day is exactly like it would be if you were in a private-sector office job. Show up between 0700 to 0900 depending on your office, then work an 8+ hour day, depending on how busy you are.
Some offices are really just 9-5 outfits. Others, you’ll work 70+ hours a week, and come in on weekends. If you work in a “watch desk” kind of job, you can literally work all hours of the night, but they are rare jobs, even there.
For an HQ posting, PT is optional but encouraged-- i.e., you simply have a private gym membership (or membership at the Pentagon Athletic Center) and work out when you can.
I should also add that for the most part when not in the field you work from Monday through Friday. Except when you work weekends. Which is whenever you need to. And most work days tend to be 8 hours not including PT. Except when they are longer.
Does every branch of the US military do the PT like Otanx and Loach describe? (excepting the reservists and Pentagon people)
If you’re out on a submerged sub, what sort of PT do you do?
Swimming?