Any veterans/people with military experience out there?

[Buckeyes_Doc]

Re: Any veterans/people with military experience out there?

It also depends on the job. My big mistake was letting the recruiter convince me that I had a job I wanted turns out I did not. Really pay attention to tho guys as to what they say and how they say it.

Also, you have to be ready to sacrifice a lot. You're on call 24 hrs a day. They can call you in and there's nothing you can do about it. Even if you're off.

There is a lot of brown nosing and its just sad.

There are a lot of policies and instructions that are rediculous.

Yeah I was so naive when I joined, I just fed into whatever my recruiter told me. The job I wanted wasn't "available (which I think was BS) and I felt pressured to choose another job that day so within 5 minutes I choose my job that I knew nothing about.

[Gotmadskillzson]

Re: Any veterans/people with military experience out there?

So lets take my stats to see what youd have to do to pass. I did 64 pushups for the max points (10) I did 50 situps (8.5 I believe) my waist was 36in and my run time was 12:20

When I was under JSOC in the Army these were my stats:

103 push ups

120 sit ups

And my 2 mile run time was 10:36


Hell that was average.....had a lot former track star guys who ran it in 9 minutes. I never was that big on push ups, but sit ups I was always very good at those.

[Gotmadskillzson]

Re: Any veterans/people with military experience out there?

Even boot camp is different.

This is VERY TRUE. My boot camp was at Ft Knox, 1 friend was at Ft Benning and another friend was at Ft Jackson. Even though all 3 of us enlisted at the same time, went through MEPS at the same time, we got sent to different bases.

And none of my friends boot camp did even half of the stuff I had to do during boot camp. But then again all my drill sgts at FT Knox were from JSOC. There were 3 drill sgts to a platoon there.

Woke up in the morning at 6am for a 3 mile run, before bed at 9pm we had another 3 mile run. Did PT damn near all day. And this is how it was 6 days a week for my boot camp.

We weren't allowed to do regular push ups, we had to do diamond push ups. Flutter kicks all day. Before we were even allowed to eat, we had to do 20 push ups, 30. sit ups and 15 pull ups every time we went to the chow hall.

[Qdiddy]

It's discouraging to read all these posts of people saying how bad their experience is/was. I have been in the Army for 14 years now, and yea there are many days that just "suck" for no better way to put it. But let's be real tell me any job in the world that is perfect and you will be a liar on the spot. It's easy to say oh this guy didn't hook me up or let me do something or whatever but you get what you put in, if you do what your supposed to and excell people will take notice. My opinion if your main joining factor is who has the easier PT then you should just stay a civilian. A the end of the day you need to ask yourself if you are ready for the military lifestyle. Which includes long days, holidays working, separation from family for long periods of time, periods in areas of imminent danger etc. That's what the military is. I don't honestly understand peop,e that join any branch and all they do is complain about being deployed, or in harms way or whatever. It's the entire reason the military exists in the first place and you knew it when u joined it was possible. So all I say is if you join ask yourself deep inside if you are ready for that lifestyle at any point in time of your career however short or long it May be. All the benefits are great but will never be enough to compensate for what you sacrifice. However I honestly believe it takes a special kind of person to do what we do day in and dY out. I'm in the army but I sY that for all the services.

[superjames1992]

Re: Any veterans/people with military experience out there?

My father was in the Air National Guard for 12 years. He was on active duty in Panama and Desert Storm. He started out as a jet engine mechanic, then, after graduating college, went to OTS and become a C-130 pilot.

Keep in mind that people in the Air Force can be away for months at a time. For example, my dad was away in Saudi Arabia for nine months during Desert Storm in 1991. Also, as a transport pilot, he got to see the world and has been away in more countries than I could ever dream of.

From what I've heard, I would recommend the USAF (or Air National Guard) over the other services as it offers the best quality of life during wartime. My dad had real beds and air conditioned tents during Desert Storm, which was a luxury that most other services didn't have, I believe.

[Buckeyes_Doc]

Re: Any veterans/people with military experience out there?

It's discouraging to read all these posts of people saying how bad their experience is/was. I have been in the Army for 14 years now, and yea there are many days that just "suck" for no better way to put it. But let's be real tell me any job in the world that is perfect and you will be a liar on the spot. It's easy to say oh this guy didn't hook me up or let me do something or whatever but you get what you put in, if you do what your supposed to and excell people will take notice. My opinion if your main joining factor is who has the easier PT then you should just stay a civilian. A the end of the day you need to ask yourself if you are ready for the military lifestyle. Which includes long days, holidays working, separation from family for long periods of time, periods in areas of imminent danger etc. That's what the military is. I don't honestly understand peop,e that join any branch and all they do is complain about being deployed, or in harms way or whatever. It's the entire reason the military exists in the first place and you knew it when u joined it was possible. So all I say is if you join ask yourself deep inside if you are ready for that lifestyle at any point in time of your career however short or long it May be. All the benefits are great but will never be enough to compensate for what you sacrifice. However I honestly believe it takes a special kind of person to do what we do day in and dY out. I'm in the army but I sY that for all the services.

Why is it discouraging? I haven't read a post in here that was just intended to put the military down. People are posting their real experiences and posting helpful information, that you don't hear from your recruiters or the commercials. I wish I reached out and asked for a fair and real assessment of the military from military members before I joined.

[Buckeyes_Doc]

Re: Any veterans/people with military experience out there?

This is VERY TRUE. My boot camp was at Ft Knox, 1 friend was at Ft Benning and another friend was at Ft Jackson. Even though all 3 of us enlisted at the same time, went through MEPS at the same time, we got sent to different bases.

And none of my friends boot camp did even half of the stuff I had to do during boot camp. But then again all my drill sgts at FT Knox were from JSOC. There were 3 drill sgts to a platoon there.

Woke up in the morning at 6am for a 3 mile run, before bed at 9pm we had another 3 mile run. Did PT damn near all day. And this is how it was 6 days a week for my boot camp.

We weren't allowed to do regular push ups, we had to do diamond push ups. Flutter kicks all day. Before we were even allowed to eat, we had to do 20 push ups, 30. sit ups and 15 pull ups every time we went to the chow hall.

We don't do flutter kicks anymore. I was leading PT one day and tried to do flutter kicks and got yelled at because it is bad for your backs. I use to hate hearing "6 inches!!!"

Also your 2 mile run time is impressive, my 1 1/2 mile is right around 10 minutes and I'm extremely winded at the end of it lol.

[Crimsontide27]

Re: Any veterans/people with military experience out there?

It's discouraging to read all these posts of people saying how bad their experience is/was. I have been in the Army for 14 years now, and yea there are many days that just "suck" for no better way to put it. But let's be real tell me any job in the world that is perfect and you will be a liar on the spot. It's easy to say oh this guy didn't hook me up or let me do something or whatever but you get what you put in, if you do what your supposed to and excell people will take notice. My opinion if your main joining factor is who has the easier PT then you should just stay a civilian. A the end of the day you need to ask yourself if you are ready for the military lifestyle. Which includes long days, holidays working, separation from family for long periods of time, periods in areas of imminent danger etc. That's what the military is. I don't honestly understand peop,e that join any branch and all they do is complain about being deployed, or in harms way or whatever. It's the entire reason the military exists in the first place and you knew it when u joined it was possible. So all I say is if you join ask yourself deep inside if you are ready for that lifestyle at any point in time of your career however short or long it May be. All the benefits are great but will never be enough to compensate for what you sacrifice. However I honestly believe it takes a special kind of person to do what we do day in and dY out. I'm in the army but I sY that for all the services.

I really feel the need to reply to this.

Its not that everyone is posting negative experiences...its that they are posting "their" unique experiences. Everyone has and will have different experiences in the military. Like a poster mentioned earlier, you can sign up on the same day, go to the same basic, have the same rank, have the same mos, and can even go to the same duty station and have a night and day difference in experiences based off your chain of command.

People go to the recruiting station and hear all kinds of BS about what the military is like and find out very quickly after signing the dotted line 1 million times and reciting the creed that you swear to affirm and uphold the President and your commanders etc...that you were mislead.

I know people that joined just to blow stuff up. Joined the Infantry, played with a few toys in basic and thats the last time you ever see them. I was combat infantry for 3 years and outside of basic...I never saw a claymore, I never saw a live AT4 , our 203 rounds were actually those chalk rounds that kick up blue dust, the AT4s fired the green tracers...oh...and for live fire on the M2A3 Bradleys, we fired the TOW missles that didnt even work.

My dream...was to be a pilot. Recruiter said there was no way into flight school without going enlisted and applying for Warrent officer and becoming a pilot that route. He suggested I join the infantry since there was a lot of down time and I would be able to attend college classes and work on my flight packet.

What he didnt tell me was that I would be going to NTC where I was on rotation 10 months of the year and I would have a chain of command that did not send ANY soliders to classes even though they were offered outside of our rotation schedule.

So now Im in the middle of the desert, working on tanks that are not relevant outside of NTC ( M551 sheridans ) and have already been told that I would not have any opportunity to fill out a flight packet for WOCS.

Discouraged, I still did my best and applied for all of the Army correspondance courses at the time ( AIPD ) so that I could at least start earning promotion points since education is pretty much the only form of points that were within your control. PT / Weapons qual was automatic points if you were sent to the board, and if you passed you automatically got the 100 from the commander.

Finished about 200 hours worth of correspondance classes, was in the top 25% or so of the unit with PT, had no counseling statements outside of normal monthly counseling, was the platoon sergeant driver and drove the battalion commanders tank into battle on rotations. I was not a bad solider.

Realizing that I would not get into flight school from the infantry side, I decided to re-enlist and go into aviation ( 67T Blackhawk Crewchief ). Went to Ft Eustis and was the honor graduate of my class. Deployed immediatly to Korea were my dream was back on track to fly.

Got to Korea and had an inprocessing breif with the 1SG and he asked what I wanted. Mentioned I wanted to go to flight school and he just laughed. Told me that I was just trying to get out of a hardship tour and that flight school would be put on hold until I redeployed back to CONUS.

One month prior to PCSing back to the states, the 2nd Infantry Division was put on notice that we were to deploy to Iraq. Never minding that we were in a non deployable unit on the DMZ in Korea....never minding that this would put us on back to back hardships....off we went.

Memorandum from the Army came down and basically said that the Army was hurting so bad for pilots that you no longer even needed to go to a Warrant Officer Board to go to flight school...you just had to complete your packet and if you had all the qualifications, you were automatically accepted into flight school.

So with packet in hand, I approached my commander with the memo he just put up on the Quansa hut, completed flight packet....AFAST test, Top Secret security clearance, both part 1 and 2 flight physicals completed, numerous recommendations from pilots in my unit etc...

...and the commander just laughed in my face...said I was just trying to get out of the war now...and worry about flight school when we got home from Iraq.

16 months later and we are still in Iraq and lo and behold...here comes red cycle alert for us and that we probably would not be redeploying from Iraq to Ft Lewis as planned, but that we would be getting a 30 day RnR and deploy straight to Afghan. This would put our various units at over 3 years of hardship tours with no break.

I then asked our new commander about flight school before we deployed to Afghan and was struck down yet again due to trying to " get out of the war".

During all of this time we had multiple changes of command, but everyone of them was pure garbage. The army was not about " be all you can be", it was about "be all the guy above you is willing to let you be".

I can make over 200 posts, both good and bad about my experiences. However I feel that I wish I had known what the military was really like, as opposed to being filled with dreams and opportunities that I never could control.

The military to me was sold on opportunities that I could be whatever I choose to be, given the fact that I would work hard and achieve it. This however was not the case and is not the case in many others careers as well.

If you have a pathetic chain of command, your time in service will be miserable. If you have a great chain of command, then the sky is the limit. Its a crapshoot. There are many more terrible commands out there versus the very few that work for the soldier.

This is what I didnt know going in.

[dickey1331]

We don't do flutter kicks anymore. I was leading PT one day and tried to do flutter kicks and got yelled at because it is bad for your backs. I use to hate hearing "6 inches!!!"

Also your 2 mile run time is impressive, my 1 1/2 mile is right around 10 minutes and I'm extremely winded at the end of it lol.

When I was in boot camp we did flutter kicks. Not sure if they still do them.


Do you really care where I sent this from?

[braves40]

Re: Any veterans/people with military experience out there?

When I was in boot camp we did flutter kicks. Not sure if they still do them.


Do you really care where I sent this from?

We did flutter kicks in the AF boot camp in `06. And we still do them for squadron pt.

[Buckeyes_Doc]

Re: Any veterans/people with military experience out there?

When I was in boot camp we did flutter kicks. Not sure if they still do them.


Do you really care where I sent this from?

We did flutter kicks up until about a year ago. I was told last September we couldn't do them anymore. Not sure if it was just our command, or a Navy thing. But I've not done flutter kicks in a group PT session since.

[Buckeyes_Doc]

Re: Any veterans/people with military experience out there?

I really feel the need to reply to this.

Its not that everyone is posting negative experiences...its that they are posting "their" unique experiences. Everyone has and will have different experiences in the military. Like a poster mentioned earlier, you can sign up on the same day, go to the same basic, have the same rank, have the same mos, and can even go to the same duty station and have a night and day difference in experiences based off your chain of command.

People go to the recruiting station and hear all kinds of BS about what the military is like and find out very quickly after signing the dotted line 1 million times and reciting the creed that you swear to affirm and uphold the President and your commanders etc...that you were mislead.

I know people that joined just to blow stuff up. Joined the Infantry, played with a few toys in basic and thats the last time you ever see them. I was combat infantry for 3 years and outside of basic...I never saw a claymore, I never saw a live AT4 , our 203 rounds were actually those chalk rounds that kick up blue dust, the AT4s fired the green tracers...oh...and for live fire on the M2A3 Bradleys, we fired the TOW missles that didnt even work.

My dream...was to be a pilot. Recruiter said there was no way into flight school without going enlisted and applying for Warrent officer and becoming a pilot that route. He suggested I join the infantry since there was a lot of down time and I would be able to attend college classes and work on my flight packet.

What he didnt tell me was that I would be going to NTC where I was on rotation 10 months of the year and I would have a chain of command that did not send ANY soliders to classes even though they were offered outside of our rotation schedule.

So now Im in the middle of the desert, working on tanks that are not relevant outside of NTC ( M551 sheridans ) and have already been told that I would not have any opportunity to fill out a flight packet for WOCS.

Discouraged, I still did my best and applied for all of the Army correspondance courses at the time ( AIPD ) so that I could at least start earning promotion points since education is pretty much the only form of points that were within your control. PT / Weapons qual was automatic points if you were sent to the board, and if you passed you automatically got the 100 from the commander.

Finished about 200 hours worth of correspondance classes, was in the top 25% or so of the unit with PT, had no counseling statements outside of normal monthly counseling, was the platoon sergeant driver and drove the battalion commanders tank into battle on rotations. I was not a bad solider.

Realizing that I would not get into flight school from the infantry side, I decided to re-enlist and go into aviation ( 67T Blackhawk Crewchief ). Went to Ft Eustis and was the honor graduate of my class. Deployed immediatly to Korea were my dream was back on track to fly.

Got to Korea and had an inprocessing breif with the 1SG and he asked what I wanted. Mentioned I wanted to go to flight school and he just laughed. Told me that I was just trying to get out of a hardship tour and that flight school would be put on hold until I redeployed back to CONUS.

One month prior to PCSing back to the states, the 2nd Infantry Division was put on notice that we were to deploy to Iraq. Never minding that we were in a non deployable unit on the DMZ in Korea....never minding that this would put us on back to back hardships....off we went.

Memorandum from the Army came down and basically said that the Army was hurting so bad for pilots that you no longer even needed to go to a Warrant Officer Board to go to flight school...you just had to complete your packet and if you had all the qualifications, you were automatically accepted into flight school.

So with packet in hand, I approached my commander with the memo he just put up on the Quansa hut, completed flight packet....AFAST test, Top Secret security clearance, both part 1 and 2 flight physicals completed, numerous recommendations from pilots in my unit etc...

...and the commander just laughed in my face...said I was just trying to get out of the war now...and worry about flight school when we got home from Iraq.

16 months later and we are still in Iraq and lo and behold...here comes red cycle alert for us and that we probably would not be redeploying from Iraq to Ft Lewis as planned, but that we would be getting a 30 day RnR and deploy straight to Afghan. This would put our various units at over 3 years of hardship tours with no break.

I then asked our new commander about flight school before we deployed to Afghan and was struck down yet again due to trying to " get out of the war".

During all of this time we had multiple changes of command, but everyone of them was pure garbage. The army was not about " be all you can be", it was about "be all the guy above you is willing to let you be".

I can make over 200 posts, both good and bad about my experiences. However I feel that I wish I had known what the military was really like, as opposed to being filled with dreams and opportunities that I never could control.

The military to me was sold on opportunities that I could be whatever I choose to be, given the fact that I would work hard and achieve it. This however was not the case and is not the case in many others careers as well.

If you have a pathetic chain of command, your time in service will be miserable. If you have a great chain of command, then the sky is the limit. Its a crapshoot. There are many more terrible commands out there versus the very few that work for the soldier.

This is what I didnt know going in.

Wow....it was tough reading this. I can't believe your CoC would laugh at you. Thankfully for the most part I've always had a good CoC. I've had Chiefs and LPO's that looked out for me. My last command gave me a end of tour award, and I've always received Early Promote evaluations. I got in a little bit of trouble a couple of years ago and my CoC completely looked out for me and took care of the incident at the lowest level.

[N51_rob]

I really feel the need to reply to this.

Its not that everyone is posting negative experiences...its that they are posting "their" unique experiences. Everyone has and will have different experiences in the military. Like a poster mentioned earlier, you can sign up on the same day, go to the same basic, have the same rank, have the same mos, and can even go to the same duty station and have a night and day difference in experiences based off your chain of command.

People go to the recruiting station and hear all kinds of BS about what the military is like and find out very quickly after signing the dotted line 1 million times and reciting the creed that you swear to affirm and uphold the President and your commanders etc...that you were mislead.

I know people that joined just to blow stuff up. Joined the Infantry, played with a few toys in basic and thats the last time you ever see them. I was combat infantry for 3 years and outside of basic...I never saw a claymore, I never saw a live AT4 , our 203 rounds were actually those chalk rounds that kick up blue dust, the AT4s fired the green tracers...oh...and for live fire on the M2A3 Bradleys, we fired the TOW missles that didnt even work.

My dream...was to be a pilot. Recruiter said there was no way into flight school without going enlisted and applying for Warrent officer and becoming a pilot that route. He suggested I join the infantry since there was a lot of down time and I would be able to attend college classes and work on my flight packet.

What he didnt tell me was that I would be going to NTC where I was on rotation 10 months of the year and I would have a chain of command that did not send ANY soliders to classes even though they were offered outside of our rotation schedule.

So now Im in the middle of the desert, working on tanks that are not relevant outside of NTC ( M551 sheridans ) and have already been told that I would not have any opportunity to fill out a flight packet for WOCS.

Discouraged, I still did my best and applied for all of the Army correspondance courses at the time ( AIPD ) so that I could at least start earning promotion points since education is pretty much the only form of points that were within your control. PT / Weapons qual was automatic points if you were sent to the board, and if you passed you automatically got the 100 from the commander.

Finished about 200 hours worth of correspondance classes, was in the top 25% or so of the unit with PT, had no counseling statements outside of normal monthly counseling, was the platoon sergeant driver and drove the battalion commanders tank into battle on rotations. I was not a bad solider.

Realizing that I would not get into flight school from the infantry side, I decided to re-enlist and go into aviation ( 67T Blackhawk Crewchief ). Went to Ft Eustis and was the honor graduate of my class. Deployed immediatly to Korea were my dream was back on track to fly.

Got to Korea and had an inprocessing breif with the 1SG and he asked what I wanted. Mentioned I wanted to go to flight school and he just laughed. Told me that I was just trying to get out of a hardship tour and that flight school would be put on hold until I redeployed back to CONUS.

One month prior to PCSing back to the states, the 2nd Infantry Division was put on notice that we were to deploy to Iraq. Never minding that we were in a non deployable unit on the DMZ in Korea....never minding that this would put us on back to back hardships....off we went.

Memorandum from the Army came down and basically said that the Army was hurting so bad for pilots that you no longer even needed to go to a Warrant Officer Board to go to flight school...you just had to complete your packet and if you had all the qualifications, you were automatically accepted into flight school.

So with packet in hand, I approached my commander with the memo he just put up on the Quansa hut, completed flight packet....AFAST test, Top Secret security clearance, both part 1 and 2 flight physicals completed, numerous recommendations from pilots in my unit etc...

...and the commander just laughed in my face...said I was just trying to get out of the war now...and worry about flight school when we got home from Iraq.

16 months later and we are still in Iraq and lo and behold...here comes red cycle alert for us and that we probably would not be redeploying from Iraq to Ft Lewis as planned, but that we would be getting a 30 day RnR and deploy straight to Afghan. This would put our various units at over 3 years of hardship tours with no break.

I then asked our new commander about flight school before we deployed to Afghan and was struck down yet again due to trying to " get out of the war".

During all of this time we had multiple changes of command, but everyone of them was pure garbage. The army was not about " be all you can be", it was about "be all the guy above you is willing to let you be".

I can make over 200 posts, both good and bad about my experiences. However I feel that I wish I had known what the military was really like, as opposed to being filled with dreams and opportunities that I never could control.

The military to me was sold on opportunities that I could be whatever I choose to be, given the fact that I would work hard and achieve it. This however was not the case and is not the case in many others careers as well.

If you have a pathetic chain of command, your time in service will be miserable. If you have a great chain of command, then the sky is the limit. Its a crapshoot. There are many more terrible commands out there versus the very few that work for the soldier.

This is what I didnt know going in.

If this story is true. I have no reason to doubt it. Contact the IG. CoC laughing at you as your pursue career enhancement. Holding you back? The LPO in me is telling me that you need to go over their heads. Contact the IG.

Sent from RedskinNation.

[Crimsontide27]

Re: Any veterans/people with military experience out there?

When I was a lower enlisted soldier ( E1-E4 ) , I would have had no problem going to the IG. However, when I became and NCO all of that changed. You can have multiple issues as an E1-E4 and it only remains in the company file..it doesnt follow you. The last thing I wanted to do as a career NCO was go to IG, alienate my chain of command, and end up getting a bad NCOER.

As those that are in service and are a NCO can tell you, just one bad NCOER can halt your career path. I planned on making the military my career, so I did everything in my power to do the right thing.

I encouraged my soliders to go to IG when they thought it necessary, but it really never accomplished anything. Solider would go to IG and the first thing that would happen is they would send a representitive to the unit within a few days to talk to the chain of command about it. Even watched a soldier get a field grade article 15 for drinking while on rotation, yet there was no proof he was drinking. Lost 3 years of rank and pay for nothing. IG was involved, but at the end of the day, its still up to your local chain of command. Matter of fact, in almost 7 years of service, I never saw IG accomplish one thing. I heard about a lot of people going, but never heard about any resolutions.

[Weeks]

Re: Any veterans/people with military experience out there?

Did you military guys have to tread water? If so, what was the longest time.

I can do everything, except for tread water lol

Edit: and I wasn't in the military just so you know