Anyone else remember “MacNamara’s 100,000”?
Oh, going back to the original topic, if this fellow wants a new life, this could be the way to go. If he’s determined to bring the TRUTH to all of his shipmates, he’s going to have a very unpleasant and brief time in the service. And remember, there are many ways an accident can occur aboard a ship.
No worries. I remember one poor sod in my company who qualified for nothing. His orders were for OJT as an Engineman on the riverine patrol boats in Vietnam. :eek:
I qualified for any school in the Navy and the assignments guy in boot was very excited about it. He wanted to sent me to CT school to be a linguist because of my MLAT score or Radioman/Sonarman school because I topped out that part of the test. He was quite crestfallen when I told him I was already designated Group 8 (Seabees).
I don’t really see a lot to worry about - the Navy has experience with filtering out people it doesn’t want, and training people it does want to follow orders. If the Navy doesn’t reject him during recruitment, I would expect boot camp to be an unpleasant experience that either snaps him into shape or causes him to wash out. I don’t see him managing to get through boot camp with that kind of attitude and get into trouble for it later, and neither getting rejected by the Navy or washing out of boot camp are any sort of permanent bad mark against him.
Perhaps things have gotten better, although I doubt it. I ran into a lot of guys who just got passed along to the next command because nobody wanted to go through the trouble of getting rid of them. One man who worked for me had been in for 11 years and was still an E-4. He was a line-walker who thought he knew how to beat the system. He didn’t survive my tenure, but for eleven years he was somebody’s problem child.
Something I haven’t seen anyone consider in this thread, that I’ve noticed so far:
Suppose, as seems likely, that he either doesn’t get into the Navy or washes out of boot camp. What happens to him after that? Higher education seems out. Will he be able to get and hold a job? Will he be able to function in the world of Grown-Ups? Will the family’s church take care of him?
It does seem his parents didn’t think of that. Even a little bit.
Then again, there’s some chance they were subjected to something similar as kids and somehow they’re still alive and feeding themselves. Thought the future will be far less kind to the uneducated than the past has been.
He may have problems if they talk about the sextant
Conventional wisdom is that 5% of your people will take up 95% of your time. Sounds like you found that to be about right.
I am going to play devil’s advocate - he might be okay. I was a really lippy and opinionated young person. I loved nothing more than to argue and debate. I made it through basic (barely, I was not a great soldier) and have had a pretty good career in uniform (currently a Major). Comes down to how quickly he realizes he is out of his element and to shut up and pay attention.
This reminds me to wonder: Whatever became (or will become) of the umpteen Duggar kids (remember them?) of “Umpteen Kids and Counting” infamy? Apparently, at least some of them will do just fine as long as their Reality TV cachet holds up. But what of the rest of them?
Well, that’s up to them individually, isn’t it? Just like everyone else. Odd belief systems are more the rule than the exception, historically.
That wasn’t my experience in the 1980s Navy. Enlisted personnel have a fixed term contract. The decision on whether the individual would be allowed to reenlist was dependent on the yearly evaluation which documented professional development/progress and a recommendation for retention.
On board a ship, we were strongly discouraged from passing along a problem child; additionally it was difficult. To transfer to another Department out of my division in Deck Department, the individual needed to do the correspondence course for the gaining Department, PARs (Personnel Advancement Requirements), a recommendation from me/my Department Head and acceptance by the gaining Department.
Occasionally an individual was moved to a different division within the Department to see if the trouble was personality conflict but that was rare.
And then there was the annual program affectionally known as Operation Bottomblow in which individuals/problem children could be non-judicially non-punitively separated for the needs of the Navy. Generally speaking, an individual would be nominated if they accumulated/displayed a pattern of minor UCMJ violations/misdemeanors and lack of Naval comportment: missing muster/late for watches, a positive urinalysis, surly attitude, unkempt appearance, failure to progress professionally, ect. All these infractions needed to be documented, as well as that the individual had been counseled. As always, the paperwork goes up the chain of command and the ship’s Captain makes the final determination.
About the OP’s relative: If he makes it thru basic training, when he gets to his first duty station and he starts spouting his non-mainstream beliefs, the majority of personnel will likely tell him to blow it out his bilge (in more colorful language). The discipline and structure of the service may be good for him, I’ve seen it happen; on the other hand, military service isn’t the right fit for everybody.