These bastards, who over the years gladly cashed their drill pay checks and watched their retirement packages grow, are worse than draft dodgers and deserters who never claimed to be patriots....
Richard Crenna had a line in the movie The Sandpebbles, "Any man who thinks this is a job like any other for which he draws a salery is a thief of the food he eats and a tresspasser in his bed".
Don't let a story like this make you think that many reservists are behaving this way. Remember all the "Tokyo Rose's" in the fine journalistic "fourth branch" (or is that, "fifth column?).
I have a cousin married to a reservist who is proud to leave the pulpit and serve (although reservists are treated with disrespect by the jerkier regulars).
"These bastards, who over the years gladly cashed their drill pay checks and watched their retirement packages grow, are worse than draft dodgers and deserters who never claimed to be patriots...."
I hate to tell you but the money is very weak and the benefits consist maninly of being able or allowed to go to the base to shop at the commissary 24 times a year...although it used to be only 12 times a year...
retirement?....you get a sliver of what the normal military gets but the kicker is, you don't get it til you are 60...
so for these guys to not be able to even get proportionately the same benefits as an active duty person, all the while being called up constantly, well, I don't know what the services would do if its wasn't for the guard and the reserves...
I do agree that it is dessertion if they refuse to go do their duty....but please, the guard and reserves are no picnic...
the people in the guard and reserves carry on a lot of important work as civilians as it is....firemen, policemen, postal workers, construction , nurses, pilots, doctors, etc....