9/11 happened in my Senior year of high school. I went down to the Marines recruiting station with a buddy of mine. We took the entrance exam or aptitude test or whatever it was. They told me that I scored very highly and they kept in contact with me for a while. My Dad uncharacteristically talked me out of it, and I’m glad he did.
Have not served
Regret it a bit, but it did not fit into other life ambitions
Both suck year round. My nine months in Guam was the worst deployment I ever made, and second in misery only to Vietnam.
Does Army Brat count? Seriously, we don’t get enough credit for all that we go through. Especially us Vietnam era brats.
One option not covered. DEP ELS because I was young and stupid enough to mention to my recruiter that I went to the doctor when we were out running together. He confused it with a medical disqualifying condition and I was too pissed at them to deal with the waver process once the ELS paper arrived unannounced.
Remember, recruiters are not your friends.
What’s bad about Guam? Not as much a tropical paradise as it looks in pictures?
Actually, Guam was by choice. Golf after work every day and diving on the weekends! I loved it there, and so did my family. I was slated to go to Osan, ROK after that (I got hired to work at the NAF HQ there), but tore my left ACL three days before my orders dropped and had to drop the assignment. I called the aSsignment folks in San Antonio to let them know (there was a significant amount of training that had to be done before the Osan assignment) and he asked where I wanted to go. I told him that I didn't care, but I'd rather not be assigned to Air Force Global Strike Command (SAC's successor). He accused me of not wanting to go to Minot, but I insisted I didn't want any AFGSC base. The next day I had an e-mail..."Congratulations on your orders to Minot AFB, ND!" I was not amused.
I arrived in Minot December last year at approximately 0200. I asked the cab driver to take me to the base, but first "take me somewhere to buy pants." He looked confused, until I pointed out that I was wearing a tank top, board shorts, and flip flops. He took me to Wal-Mart off the meter! I really like the place; the people here are really friendly and my kids are learning to enjoy it here. I might even stay after I retire!
I’m guessing that when Chefguy was there it wasn’t the best part of Guam’s history to be there. It is a tropical paradise, but is a lot dirtier than you see in photos. It is also a Japanese tourist trap, so things are very expensive. The locals have a really odd, to me love-hate relationship with visitors (log or short term) to their island. In my experience, on a macro level they want everyone to leave and reclaim the island as the Chamorro homeland. On a micro scale, they are some of the most friendly, welcoming people I’ve ever met.
Every time a USN ship docks, the island tips over.
I don’t swim and I don’t play golf. We worked six-day weeks, and the heat/humidity was awful. I borrowed a car and took a drive around the island on one day off; once pretty much covers everything in the driving realm. The only entertainment at night was the strip bars that catered to the military (and which didn’t interest me in the least), or the military club on base with the same boring drunks. I honestly thought I was going to lose it during that deployment.
It helps if you have relatives there(like I do). I went to so many cookouts I gained seven pounds in my short time there, and I don’t think I paid for a drink the whole time. If you belong to a family over there, it actually means something.
USN 1972 - 1978 Not a warrior. though.
I served in the Army from 1975–1979.
I think everyone should serve as a requirement of citizenship. It needn’t be in the military, but two or three years of serving the greater good is not too much to ask of our country’s citizens. Working on infrastructure, disaster relief, building homes for the poor, etc. would be acceptable alternatives to military service.
And I’m not talking about working for free, but pay should be commensurate with the risk involved, and consequently, military service, especially during a conflict, should be at or near the top.
USAF from 1987 to 1997
Radio and Television Broadcast Specialist
Seoul, Sicily, Denver, Tokyo, Seoul, Colorado Springs, and Seoul
My third tour to Korea in nine years was a pretty big clue that maybe I was on the wrong career path.
How absurd, no, being an Army Brat doesn’t count! Plenty of people endure a lot of crap growing up—should they also get credit?
If Army Brats want credit for what they go through, I suggest taking it up with their parents. Maybe these parents could give their brats a larger allowance or more video games.
Sounds a bit like Hawaii in that respect.
I had a squad instructor in SOI from Guam; he said it stands for Give Us American Money.
I learned it as “Give Up And Masturbate”.
Indeed. Dad was a Photo Interpreter, and was needed close enough to Viet Nam to look at the pictures while they were still wet. While he only had 1 tour in Viet Nam, he also had tours to Thailand and the Philippines. So it was stateside, overseas, stateside, overseas, stateside, overseas, stateside…
I had to join the Air Force to settle down. I was 24 before I lived in the same place for more than 2 years.
I know, what a whiner, right? What do military kids and spouses have to complain about? I mean, if you get bullied or even don’t like the other kids at school, no worries! You’ll be leaving them all behind when you move some place else in two years or so. Yeah, that means you also leave any friends you might have made, and you don’t get the sense of stability that comes from growing up in a community, but look at the bright side: you’ll get to live in exciting, vibrant cultural hubs like Killeen TX, Fayetteville NC, or Hinesville GA! You might even get to live in Korea or Germany or Guam, where the locals may hate you, or accept you, or ignore you altogether.
And yeah, you might not get to see your Mom or Dad for six months or a year, if they’re deployed overseas, but you’ll probably end up in one of those “Soldiers surprise family by coming home unexpectedly” videos on YouTube, and who doesn’t love those? That’s assuming, of course, that your Dad or Mom comes home at all. But that’s what you signed up for, right? (Oh, wait, you didn’t choose this, did you? You didn’t get a say in the matter at all.)
Yeah, military kids and spouses really should just suck it up and enjoy the great life they get.
There aren’t enough eyeroll emojis for Darkon’s comment. It was a goddamn shitty thing to say.
Probably better in another thread, and there are more points to be made for how tough it is to be a military brat, but it beats a lot of other ways to grow up at the same time, you know, like in a ghetto, etc. Maybe a spin-off thread would be more appropriate?