There is a middle ground between the two. You’d probably get one of those.
I really would like clarification on what you consider stupid about that post. Is it stupid that people think that Soldiers in a combat zone will be killed, but college students are better than that and won’t be killed? Is it stupid to think that US Army Soldiers wear protective equipment to keep them from being killed in a firefight but college students don’t? Maybe you are objecting to the fact that college students go to school unknowing of the risks, but I am supposed to tell people that your son/daughter may be killed in Iraq, Afghanistan, or some other country, or may die in the US pursuing a liberal arts degree.
Please tell me what you find stupid.
SSG Schwartz
I never attempted it so I don’t know the exact procedure. Just know that we lost several people that way. Hell some people never made it out of the reception unit.
2.6 million college freshmen per year [cite ]. Suggesting that somewhere around 10 million total college students.
Roughly 2.5 million in the US Military all told, counting reservists and the coast guard. [cite ]
From Wikipedia I looked up all the school shootings that have happened since the invasion of Iraq. The number I came up with was 62 deaths and 58 injuries. [cite ]
The number of American soldiers that have been killed since the invasion are 3960 Us dead and 28530 wounded [cite ]
My very unscientific look at the numbers tells us that you have a .00063 % chance of being killed and a .00058% chance of being injured as a college student these days.
Being in the armed forces however will garner you .15% chance of death and a 1.1% chance of being injured.
That number is assuming all of the armed forces, it will skew higher since new recruits are more likely to be sent to Iraq and we probably shouldn’t count the Coast Guard.
So yeah, whats an order of magnitude or three between friends.
Can you understand why what you said is stupid now? And please, feigning ignorance is pathetic.
I can only speak for the Navy, but there were several times when you could raise your hand and say “I don’t want to be here, get me out!” and you’d get out. You’ll get an entry-level discharge, since you’ve been in less than six months.
In fact, within the first two days or so, recruits talk (or talked; my info is out-of-date, too) to staff from the recruiting command to make sure there were no irregularities in the recruiting process. For example, if your recruiter told you a material lie when the truth might have altered your decision to join, they wanted to know about it.
Robin
Both parts of this statement are completely wrong. The Coast Guard is certainly there doing port security. They are at least as likely to get injured as some fobbit. As for new guys, this isn’t like WWII where they just cycled the new guys into the meatgrinder. They were sent to a replacement battalion in Europe and then placed in a unit that took heavy casualties. Not so anymore. New soldiers are sent directly to divisions like they have been in peacetime. Maybe that unit is a month from deployment, maybe it’s two years from deployment. More than likely they will go to a unit that just got back from deployment due to the fact that there will be more vacancies. And no not from casualties, mostly from soldiers whose enlistment was up during deployment and then got out as soon as they could.
When I was partially through my application to re-enlist I disclosed that I had reacted to a bee sting.
That delayed my application 2.5 years, during which time I got an allergy test done and was not allergic - it didn’t matter.
If I had just kept my mouth shut it would have been fine - they don’t care if you are allergic anyway, you can tell them at any time AFTER, just not DURING the application process.
Airman Doors, I welcome your participation in a thread I started on the existence of the ‘windfall clause’.
Or the Company Commander (Navy equivalent of Drill Instructor) could simply decide you’re a bug and send you to motivational training. Apparently I wasn’t motivated enough and they sent me home.