Indeed, Johnny listed dozens of different combat jobs on his preference list, with infantry at the very end:
"Naturally I listed all of the Space Navy jobs (other than pilot) at the top; whether I went as power-room technician or as cook, I knew that I preferred any Navy job to any Army job — I wanted to travel.
Next I listed Intelligence — a spy gets around, too, and I figured that it couldn’t possibly be dull. (I was wrong, but never mind.) After that came a long list: psychological warfare, chemical warfare, biological warfare, combat ecology (I didn’t know what it was, but it sounded interesting), logistics corps (a simple mistake; I had studied logic for the debate team and “logistics” turns out to have two entirely separate meanings), and a dozen others. Clear at the bottom, with some hesitation, I put K-9 Corps, and Infantry.
I didn’t bother to list the various non-combatant auxiliary corps because, if I wasn’t picked for a combat corps, I didn’t care whether they used me as an experimental animal or sent me as a laborer in the Terranizing of Venus — either one was a booby prize. "
Most of what Rico lists in that passage wouldn’t be considered ‘combat’ by most people, I believe. Logistics? Psych warfare? Intelligence?
Most of those are useful in terms of helping plan combat but the odds of hearing the bullets fly seems pretty low unless something has gone very sideways.
Though it’s possible that in Jonny’s day, logistics officers, psychological warfare experts, etc, are all embedded with front line troops. In the MI, after all, even the highest ranking officers make jumps - and doctrine in the other parts of the future military may be the same.
The philosophy of the book and that of the movie are so different that one might as well consider them separate stories. The movie sucked, the book is one of my three favorite by Heinlein.
If you are talking about the book, only the first two are correct. Basically, citizenship was granted only through military service, and while you were in the military you couldn’t vote or anything else. It was after your service hitch was over that you could then assume your citizenship mantle and vote and/or service in politics. Basically, everything else was available to everyone. It was one of the things they talked about in the beginning of the book in fact…Rico’s dad basically told him it’s stupid to go into the military to get citizenship as it was meaningless, and almost all the instructors or recruiters said basically the same thing. I recall there was a class he was in (that wasn’t even graded) that the guy in it (who was a citizen) made this point, repeatedly.
I think, however, you are talking about the movie. And the movie was deliberately an attack on the book, and yeah, it was about fascism. The movie sucked, not because it was an attack on the book, but just because it sucked. Hell, they didn’t even give the MI freaking exo-suit combat armor! Fucking lame.