Ever joined the Military and succeeded? Failed?

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Staff Sergeant (E-6) Light Infantryman and Cavalry Scout. Ten Years so far in the Army; half of it active duty and half reserve component.

Throughout my career some have tried to block my promotions or kick me out; yet, I always proved them otherwise with very bold moves, either making them look stupid or earning their respect.

Last edited by gortex6 on 05 Sep 2006, 4:54 am, edited 1 time in total.

I disagree; I have been in combat. If it falls into our narrow obsession, we have the upper advantage.

I tried to join the airforce last year, actually. In hindsight, I don't think it would've been a good idea, but it seemed like an ideal situation at the time. I wanted to be an Intelligence Officer. I had the qualifications and I would've easily passed the physical test - but my eyesight barred me. I was also told in very blunt terms that I could never, in my lifetime, sign up for the military.

Well, screw them

Officially we have compulsory military service in this country, but it's pretty easy to get discharged or get away from it. I wanted to be an airforce pilot, but since I was narrow sigthed I was rejected. Instead I was offered to do service as an assistant of a meteorologist at an airforce base near my home, but I wasn't interested. So I sought respite for it due to my studies and finally didn't have to do military service at all.

Yeh, I suppose I didn't take into account that some will actually like the war related aspect. I personally was bored to tears with the job I was doing (electronic warfare). I'm in the process of rejoining right now, if I can get back in as a job that will suit me, I know I'm going to be happy for the rest of my working life.

I'm in Air Force ROTC right now and it is the only thing I want to do (despite the typical military bravado and cruelty...eg "turn the whole f*****g thing into a parking lot", laughing at videos of "hadjis" getting blown up). I'm having INCREDIBLE difficulty fitting in because I tend to really value doing things the right way (eg I don't think the underage cadets that go out and get blasted every night are "awesome") and I don't really have anything at all in common with anyone else. My commanders like me though, but I am worried about the social aspect because of all the emphasis on "unit cohesion". (I'm also struggling to pass just ONE portion of the PFT). It seems like I have so much going against me but this is the only thing I want to do....I don't know what'll happen if I don't make it.

Funny, I joined, lasted almost two years. Actually I got past book camp and my other training but when I got to my unit things went bad. I could not live with the way people treated me and acted around me. I was fine during trianing because I told myself, this is just training, once this is over it won't ever be like this again... Boy was I wrong.


People were horrible, truly horrible. My room mate was a raging alcoholic, my first one was. He liked to tell stories about this future wars... Regardless of his lack of formal education he insisted he had completed ground breaking work on hovercraft technology. My second one was a supposedly bipolar male (Said he had been diagnosed outside of the army, funny thing as soon as he got off work he was happy. He got out before I did). My final room mate was a bit of a drug dealer, he was never around so I didn't care. I was always scared ****less that eventually he'd get in trouble and it would somehow get back to me too. Never happened so I don't care much.


My first two room mates like to play really loud music, they also bashed my taste in music often. I don't listen to very much music, I will only listen to a song if I like the way it sounds. I really don't care what its about, I find most songs really arn't about anything even if they try to be. On the off chance a song is about something its usually inconsistent with the beliefs/actions of the person playing it.


I liked the song blue by eiffel 65, apperently the song writers are gay. I don't know, but the fact that I liked the song really pissed a lot of people off. I was even told by some non-christians that this song severely offends my God and that he will send me to a pit of everlasting despair for listening to it (fine with me, I kind of get off on pain sometimes).


I got honorably discharged from the army a few weeks ago, just under two years. I couldn't stand the army, the people were stupid, they treated me badly, we had no mission, and in general there was very little tolerence for anyone that wasn't a stereotypical white male 21 Christian. Yes I am actually most of those things (not 21), however My beliefs by most would be considered extreme. Unlike the traditional Christian God mine is different. But Nobody asked about my beliefs, so I'll keep them to myself.

When I was 19, I attempted to enlist in the United States Navy. However, I was not diagnosed, and am not now. I have achieved some functioning on my own without realizing what was wrong etc etc etc.

However, I twas an interesting process, and at the time a dream of mine. I still wouldn't mind going. Despite slight scoliosis, and a bad right ankle(which had just enough functioning to pass) I passed in all ways but one. What kept me out, was actually my Eyesight.


I'm not sure why this matters, as AS was never involved in any way, but you asked and I answered.

I never considered it, although I did get mail inviting me to apply to West Point because of my test scores. However, I have been thinking about this recently.

Since I found out I was having a son, I've been worried about the draft. But I just cannot imagine my son being drafted and used as cannon fodder. I can picture him doing some kind of geological survey type stuff for the military, or maybe doing code-breaking or something else involving computers.
Not the kind of stuff where you're on the front line being shot at- he's like me, off in his own little world most of the time. (It once took multiple attempts on behalf of the passenger in the car to get me to notice an escaped, full-grown African elephant about 10 yards away from my car.)

My mom always said that my son reminded her of my cousin at that age, which makes me wonder about my cousin. He joined the Air Force during Vietnam, and they put his brain to good use, and gave him training, and he ended up working for Martin-Marietta for a long time, and now he works at NASA.

Well, the problem was a bit different for me. I did get yelled at a lot for stimming in formation, and the runs were really a bit beyond my capabilities. Okay, I was really convinced that the runs wouldn't be a problem because, really, I had no problem with walking or rollerblading or bike-riding at sustained speeds. What I didn't take into account, though, was that I had never learned how to run properly. I'd learned how to sprint, but I'd never learned that steady, loping gait. Well, it eventually came to me, and, for a while, I was starting to improve.

Then I got pneumonia, and they didn't send me in for a serious diagnosis until I passed out on a march. Everything went downhill from there. For one thing, I really hated the sergeants for treating me like a malingerer for weeks, yelling at me to keep walking when I was still experiencing acid trip hallucinations AFTER it was clear I REALLY WAS incapacitated, and later, as I was sitting on a bench waiting for the bus, screaming at me to stand at parade rest as a formation passed when I was physically UNABLE to stand up. Okay, I'm not a whiner, and I never have been except during meltdowns. When I say I was physically unable to stand up, I mean I was quite literally seeing butterflies, really radiant and colorful, and listening to the sound of roaring water while some loud idiot hollered in the distance.

Anyway, in spite of finally being taken to the infirmary, I was just annoyed enough with the whole system that, combined with still feeling weak from the illness, I finally went up to Mental Health and told them that I'd been diagnosed with Tourette's when I was younger. I'd never accepted that diagnosis, and I still don't. Now I understand that I have much deeper eccentricities than a Tourette child has ever had to face, and I understand that the successive meltdowns I used to have simply don't occur in a normal child. In any case, I really don't like my reason for choosing to get myself discharged. It was more out of anger and a sense of betrayal than out of any real feeling that I wouldn't be able to make it. I still think that, if it hadn't been for my bout with pneumonia, I would have gone on to complete my training and led a more exciting and fulfilling life as a result. At the time, though, I just didn't want to do it anymore.

However, I've really found out since then that, in spite of my efforts to maintain a good physical condition, I really have a rather shoddy immune system. As long as I stay in one place, I'm fine, but every single time I've ever travelled I've come down with something. One time I got this really nasty virus. I didn't even know where or who I was for a while. It was really funny in retrospective, but that stuff was serious. I'm going to start taking a protective mask with me when I travel by train, from now on. It's just gotten ridiculous.

I wanted to, but at that time they would not even consider me because of my biological gender, discrimination sucks.

I am still waiting to be discharged from reserve service. I did a total of five years this time in the army, and four previous to that, when I took a leave of absense and the left the army. I got told then that I could well have AS, but was not happy out of the army, and went back into the reserves, then went regular and stayed in, until the latest incursion into Iraq, I had applied for my discharge previously, and after serving in the gulf left regular service. Was part of a study on returning troops from the gulf, after all the tests, help with PTSD, guess what, we think you got AS Mr.! Makes sense now.
I did enjoy the army for the most part, rules and routine etc. If I didn't want to be sociable then I wasn't, no pressure. No-one realy gave me too much trouble, I'm big enough to look after my self, and had a rank after a while. Having said that you get some real A-holes in the service, who you can't make any sense of. Glad of the experiance though.

I was also a corpsman in the Navy and got honorably discharged. higher tenure (troop downsizing) this past September of 05. I was in for 8 1/2 years.

Holy crap! You're the only other person I've ever seen say they have the same exact problem. I can walk/hike astonishing distances that my friends marvel at over some of the roughest terrain that Southern California has to offer (and off-trail, at that), I can do more deep-knee squats than the majority of everyone at a fast heart-slamming speed, I can rock crawl like a mountain goat, and sprint with astonishing speed for a man my size...

...but if I try to run even one mile my legs will seize up and I'll be tasting blood after a very short while. It was the one part of gym class that I absolutely loathed and feared. Well, I took a bodyconditioning class in the 8th grade and could run two miles, but very very slowly and laboriously with lots of breaks. Shortly after that class was over I went back to how I was.

I always walked kind of pigeon-toed and wobbly. I grew up in heavy mountainous terrain and could walk further differences over rough terrain than I could on sidewalks. I walk slower than average on normal ground but effortlessly leave others in the dust when traversing rugged off-trail super-steep rock-strewn terrain. But get me on a normal hiking trail and I'm as slow as a slug all over again. I always sucked at riding a bike... I could walk a great deal further than I could ride, and would just run out of endurance at a very short distance.

I could never figure out how to run properly. So how do you do it?

Edited to add: when I was 13 and 14 years old my #1 goal in life was to become a Green Beret. I remember being all balls-to-the-wall, doing pushups in knee-deep mud during torrential downpours, etc. etc. But I was diagnosed with childhood schizophrenia and my dad told me that there was zero chance any branch would ever take me... so I despaired.

I came out of the woods just before high school ended and I thought about joining the Marines but my dad said no, go to college. Then when I graduated college I thought about joining the Coast Guard but my dad told me to go to grad school instead (I'd already been accepted somewhere). He said I wouldn't be able to handle the life... being told what to do, the dawn-til-dusk regimen, the technical tasks, and so forth.

I remember shortly after 9/11 when our troops were sent into Afghanistan, really feeling like I should have been among their number. At that time I was a junior in college. Didn't quite feel like that about Iraq; I knew it was a bad idea from the get-go. Although sometimes I'll read articles about troop personal stories (like Newsweek's recent special issue about letters home written by people who went on to be KIA [killed in action]) and feel a twinge of guilt... like I don't quite measure up to what I should've done and been.

Well, one day when I was still completing my Master's (working on the PhD now), I was hanging out with an ex Recon Marine (as elite as the SEALs... in fact, they trained the first SEALs) who was going back to Iraq as a merc (well, I guess they call them "contractors" now) and had been in conflicts as part of Recon as far back as Beirut. He said that I was lucky, that he wishes he could have done what I was doing, and that "I let myself get put through all this sh** so that the rest of you wouldn't have to" and that his only use was as a warrior.

A childhood buddy, the oldest continuous friend I've ever had... he's in the 82nd Airborne. His second tour in Iraq just began... last week! One time, when I found out he'd made the 82nd, and had almost made Special Forces (he jacked up his ankle in a rappelling accident and plans to try again), I said "man, you've made something of yourself" and I genuinely meant it. I meant it because when he and I were kids, back in the last days of the Cold War, all we wanted to do - and half of all we ever talked about, played about, etc. - was to grow up to be hardcore bada*s super-elite commandos just like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Steven Segeal in all those now-cheesy 80s movies. And he said "no way man, you're the one who's made something of themselves! The Army ain't sh**!"

Sometimes I get to thinking... if I have my PhD by the time we go too far with the Middle Eastern adventure and WWIII begins in earnest, I would enlist and offer my services per my academic specialty (sociology). But I don't want to see that ever come to pass. Neo-cons out, now!! !

Just got out of the Air Force recently (downsizing as well, although it was on a volunteer basis) too.

I joined up because I didn't want to go to college and I didn't know what else to do, but the money for college now that I've grown up a bit is really nice (pays my mortgage while federal grants pay my tuition).

I wasn't really happy in the military, but I've never really been happy anywhere, so take it for what it's worth.

Ya, as much as I hate to admit it sometimes the military did me a lot of good. I don't think I would be anywhere without it. (Perhaps living with my mom just like my 26 year old brother) It is putting me through college right now and enabling me to pay my bills.

Now that I look back, I pretty much learned all of my social skills from the military (and my husband whom I met in the military).
I was known as "mute girl" in boot camp. I got bye by not calling attention to myself but was noticed anyways and never knew why.
(I was always half a step off with my marching)

I compensated for my social skills with my physical fitness skills. I couldn't sprint to save my life but I was one of the top two highest fitness levels. This is something I had to work at though. I became a runner. Slow and steady. It didn't come so natural and I got in shape right before boot camp.

I usaully got in trouble for forgetting things and losing them on a regular basis. I was also accused of giving people dirty looks and rolling my eyes. I was told I was rude and thought I was better than everyone. (Being disrespectful to my superiors ) I was the departmental scape goat on many occasions and eventually I learned to defend myself. I did get sick of having to prove myself all of the time but it was liberating when I could.

Right before I got out of the Navy (Like one month) and shortly after giving birth to my second child I had a major meltdown at work. This cheif, who had problems with others as well, was trying to play RDC with me because I was unable to find care for my baby and had to bring her to work. My husband also showed up and intimidated the chief that I believe was picking on me. I love my husband. He has always protected me and has many times been my connection to the real world.
You think the bullying would stop when you are a child but it doesn't. Adults do it too. I don't understand it at all.
(It was my last f’n day) I am still bitter about it.

I'm rambling now, sorry.