Sergeant in Afghanistan - Stop the BS and "Let's Get It Done"

Blackfive.net ^ | 1/31/07

[familyop]

I haven't been on hardship tours for any length of time near a year but was in a combat specialty for 7 years and was away from home often. Combat soldiers do live very differently from others, and they do tire of politics and supply games that headquarters units and admin personnel (in the "rear," meaning in far more secure perimeters) cheat them by. Combat soldiers work hard nearly around the clock, get extremely dirty (don't see shower points for weeks or months), are often neglected, are not very often allowed to communicate with their families at home, and do far more dangerous work. During those rare times when combat soldiers see who the other 95% lives, they are dazzled by the colors, laid-back attitudes and other amenities of built-up posts. Then because of jealousies and other resentments against masculinity, they're treated more like sh__ when they get home and go job hunting.

There's yet another anonymous account for you.

[familyop]

By the way, at the end of the 1980s, training went old-fashioned again but only for real combat specialties (bravos). Brutality and name-calling in initial training is very necessary from combat soldiers to learn the needed humility (desensitization against dwelling on trivial, anxious thougts: e.g., "sergeant called me a so-and-so") to actually fight and fight well in combat (not to "shoot her gun" until she ran out of "bullets"). While initial training for men in combat specialties is brutal, drill sergeants secretly care very much about their recruits and protect them as well as they can from serious, lasting injuries.

I knew a few excellent men in my own units who'd fought/been in Vietnam, alhtough none of them had been officers, businessmen or politicians. But for the most part, we'll have a chance to be better off when the Vietnam era generation is gone.

[HANG THE EXPENSE]

Certainly