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I burnt it down in my military career for a decade and a half, been some places, done some things. A few things I'm proud of, and a lot of things I’ll never speak of outside of the team room. I was a hard charger, only slowing down long enough to repair whatever I needed on my body until I started after the next goal. You couldn’t volunteer for anything before me. My motto was sacrifice and suffering at all costs.
I was never the best option, never the fastest, never the strongest, never the best at anything. Except when it came to work ethic. I only met a few Soldiers who would compare to my work ethic and they all outside of one had phenomenal careers.
During that time in my life, I learned some valuable lessons. The promotion system in the Army is extremely broken, you won’t be a SNCO unless you have OWI charge, a Domestic Violence Charge, or at least two divorces. Most civilians will question that statement or say I’m disgruntled.
Reality is I am disgruntled but 90% of SNCO’s check multiple of those boxes because it, “Just comes with the territory.” Then you have 5% whose parents served so they get somewhat fast tracked, and then the other 5% is a mixture of luck and being in the right place at the right time. We call that last group unicorns. If you don’t believe me, ask someone who has been there and done that. I’ve watched Soldiers who had pending drug cases, pending DUI’s, pending Domestic Violence Charges, etc. get promoted.
So, it doesn’t matter what you do or don’t do. If the military wants to promote you, they will. There is always a waiver, an exception to policy, or a workaround. I’m currently sitting at a table in a far away land most will never see or be able to point to on a map at a table with four other Senior NCO’s. Two of them I’d go to hell and back for, one of those I already have, and three of which I wouldn’t trust alone with my wife, daughter, or dog. Hell for that matter I wouldn’t trust them with my neighbor’s cat, and he’s an asshole. The neighbor, not the cat.
I say this because as a society most “normal” people see soldiers in a light that really doesn’t exist. We recruit from certain demographics for obvious reasons. Rarely will you meet a soldier that comes from a good home. It’s generally poverty, broken home, parent was an alcoholic, or drug abuser, etc. Whatever the reason it’s always them trying to escape whatever suffering they are seeing and hoping to find a future that’s better.
They are basically looking for people who they don’t expect to outgrow the Military. As a SNCO once said to me, the Military is nothing more than a working man’s welfare. He later went on to explain that you can truly mess up, kill someone, destroy a multimillionaire dollar piece of equipment and they will more retain you if possible. A statement that I’ve seen multiple times come true as my career progressed.
At this table of five, we have a total of 10 divorces, 11 if you count the one pending (not mine), 4 DUIS, three felony drug charges (one of those got dismissed not because of lack of evidence but because he had his lawyer tell the prosecutor he was deploying to Afghanistan in a few weeks and needed to provide a legal decision for his leadership). The case was dismissed a short time later. The list goes on and on.
I’m no angel either, one divorce, one that can be filed at any day, alcoholism, drug use, authority issues, fights. That list like the one above goes on and on. The fact I’m still serving in the military and not in the department of corrections (horrible name btw, they correct nothing) is surprising to even me. An old Platoon Sergeant once told me that he wanted to keep me in his section because I, “Lived on the edge where the demons existed and that makes you a great Soldier.”
He didn’t give a fuck what we did if we were ready for combat. He always used that really cliché adage of, “Boys will be boys.” As I got older, I realized that was the accepted answer, because if you said something else it would cause more problems. That PSG thought I was a pretty good Soldier, even though I considered myself a horrible human being. He knew if he asked me to do it, it was done quick, fast and in a hurry.
They teach us an acronym of LDRSHIP. Yet all that goes out the window if success is on the line. It’s a successful at all cost mentality, which is great for warfare. Yet it will destroy your moral compass very rapidly. On my first deployment, my first squad leader was “fired”. I say fired because it’s a common phrase used to basically tell us he was moved from his current position to generally behind a desk for a few months until his previous position or a higher rank position comes available. The military has solidified my belief in the theory that you are promoted to a level of incompetence.
The new Squad Leader had done time, now don’t get that twisted. Some of the best Soldiers I served with had criminal records, this guy wasn’t one of them. He wasn’t a combat leader; he was a complete disgrace to the uniform. Another reminder: When selecting someone or a thing, there’s the best option, and then there’s the best available option. His idea of team building was to force us to tell dead baby jokes. Example: why do you put a dead baby feet first into a blender? So, you can watch its face change when the blender is turned on.
Again, we were young kids, but we should have known better. The older I get the more outspoken I have become because at least I must own my words and actions. Me as a young Soldier I was naïve and believed in what I was doing. This same squad leader would always piss in bottles and throw it at vehicles while on my first combat deployment. He said he wanted to create more terrorists, as it was “Job security” for all of us.
Then shit hit the fan and he froze. Basically, we took some incoming rounds and all that chest beating went away and we saw what he was. Luckily, we had a solid assistant squad leader who took charge. The ASL luckily left the military and is now chasing his dream in the firearms industry.
Long story short we rotated back stateside, and the SL got a promotion and a position he didn’t need or deserve. After 7-8 months after we rotated back, he had two more OWI’s on his Harley (pro tip don’t run from the cops on a Harley, they are loud, but very slow). He also got pregnant, someone that wasn’t his third wife, but his stepdaughter.
I always knew my time in uniform would end whether I wanted it to or not. I knew my service, like everything else was on borrowed time. Knowing it is going to end and being at peace with it are two different things. I think I’m as at peace with it as I will ever be.
The best men and women I’ve ever known were soldiers, The worst men and women I’ve ever known were also soldiers. Soldiers and Human beings don’t belong in the same sentence. All the human beings I served with got out after their first contract.
I joined to do a job, get out of poverty, and serve with men and women of honor. The reality of my service couldn’t be farther from that.
DOA's
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Thank you for sharing. People do not realize the mental battles that goes on inside an elite military unit head.
ReplyI would never say anything I did was elite (minus avoiding some Article 15s), I'm very mediocre, If you saw me on the street you'd assume I was some type of construction worker, or just got out of prison.
Reply