Military service of soldiers.

[A Canadian Cat]

Interesting stuff - I get the sense there is more

...Northern Arabian Gulf, 1991, sweeping 29 mines (acoustic/magnetic Russian and Italian mines purchased by Iraq)...we painted the "kill markings" on the bridge wing...

I am not sure I understand this. Probably because I don't know what a "bridge wing" is.

...Gulf of Salerno...2000...caused a small diplomatic crisis when I had one of my USN salvage ships try to recover a sunken Sherman Duplex-Drive tank from 110 FSW...I did a few dives on her, she was in great shape!

Did this cause a small crisis because you did not have permission to conduct salvage in Italian territorial waters? You need permits for that:)

[Blueonblack83]

I am not sure I understand this. Probably because I don't know what a "bridge wing" is.

 

 

I googled and this came out: https://www.google.de/search?q=bridge+wing&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&gws_rd=cr&ei=v83CVJGrBYnfONXGgPAO

 

It is that extending thingy from the bridge.

[kohlenklau]

Bridge wings are on the sides of the bridge. I have the actual photo somewhere in my stuff... This one here is just some other ship's awards. Not my ship...

 

I was called in front of the admiral for an a$$ chewing. The USDAO in Rome at the US Embassy said we were good to go for Diplomatic Clearance to anchor in Italian waters but apparently that was just for routine diving operations not something really cool....

Now that I think about it, that was the 2nd time I tried to lift a tank off the bottom. The first was off of Chesapeake Bay in 1988 with a Liberty ship that went down by collision in a WW2 convoy. It had Valentine Tanks headed to Russia from a first stop in the UK. We 4 point-moored over the wreck and on my surface-supplied dive I found the tank, naturally! After being lowered first into a hold full of artillery shells! It took a few days to rig a bridle under her and then the weather kicked up like hell. We had her at the surface and by now the seas are rolling and we are close to an unsafe condition so we just secured everything as is and in the morning she had fallen out of the bridle. Hold on, barkeep, another beer for me and Ian...anyway, in the morning we  pulled the bridle up and a big chunk of bogey wheels was stuck to the cable and I remember under the corroded parts was some grease and under the grease the copper bearing looked brand new. good British grease I guess...  

[Ultradave]

Field Artillery officer, 82d Airborne Division, about 30 years ago - left the Army with the rank of Captain. At various times was a FIST Chief, Fire Direction Officer, Brigade Fire Support Officer and Asst S3 of the 2/321st Field Artillery(Abn)  (the designation back then).  Since then the 82d Abn regimental designations for FA have changed. My secondary specialty was Nuclear Weapons.  (this was back when we had nuclear artillery shells).

 

Best time I had while in the Army was an exchange with the Canadian Parachute Regiment where we switched personnel with one of their artillery batteries. Spent about 30 days at CFB Petawawa, Ontario as guests of the Parachute Regt. They were the best hosts. We had a wonderful time and it made up for some of the rough times.

 

Sinai after Camp David, Panama, and various other deployments.

[kohlenklau]

Come on! Are we out of good stories already?

 

Here is another:

 

1987: I was the diving & salvage officer on USS GRAPPLE. We were sent to Norway to be a support vessel for an exercise (SHAREM?) to test a new type of underwater mine. CAPTOR mines were anchored to the bottom and held a Mark-46 torpedo waiting for enemy subs to pass nearby. Earlier, a previous vessel deployed the minefield in the deep waters of the West Fjord north of the Arctic Circle near Bodo. Then during the exercise itself, a USN sub did certain patterns through the minefield to activate the mines and exercise torpedoes were released and retrieved by again another support vessel. Our part was to get the mine casing with the electronics and all that for analysis. We had an ROV onboard that went down to grab the anchor cable and lift the anchor off the bottom, allowing the bouyant mine to float closer to the surface. Now comes my part! I was in a zodiac inflatable with 2 of my enlisted divers. We just had wetsuit, mask and fins to swim down to detach a stabilizer arm from the mine casing. We did a lot of waiting and loitered a distance from the main ship until called in for our tiny task. So, at one point I was in the water with just my head above the surface talking to the 2 divers in the zodiac. They looked past me and said, "Whoa! What was that?" So, I am just an ensign and figure this is one of those "mess a bit with the young officer" rights of passage. I swiveled my body and saw nothing. They said. "There it is again!". "Quit pulling my leg guys!" and turned to look again. A pod. Flock of sheep. Herd of cows. Pod. Yes, a pod of KILLER WHALES! Moving rapidly through our area. Dozens! Curving across  the surface for a breath. A big a$$ one with a dorsal fin so big that it flopped over, maybe 10 feet away. I still remember the rapid movement of my little legs to get my butt into that zodiac. We raidoed the ship. They said, "Be careful...". No $hit....I looked like a little tasty seal in my black wetsuit. Woulda been the end of my short life.

[Baneman]

Come on! Are we out of good stories already?

 

 

I'm afraid the best I can do is "I faked insanity to get out of the army."

 

It's a real short story.

[Hister]

Well Baneman, to that I would say you have to be insane to enlist with all the modern weapons who insta kill huge numbers of soldiers available these days.

So,you might not be so insane after all.

[A Canadian Cat]

Yes, a pod of KILLER WHALES!

Now that is cool.

[agusto]

I was conscripted in the Austrian army in 2008. I trained as Panzergrenadier for something like 4-5 weeks, i cant remeber exactley how long, and then i transfered to a logistics unit (the units name could be translated to something like "operation-supply-squadron") where i mostly had to do boring things. No physical training, not exercises of any kind, just paperwork. For some time after basic training i seriously thought about enlisting, but i dropped the idea after half a year of extremly boring duty in said logistics unit.

[antaress73]

Logistics is boring in civilian life too

[wee]

I was conscripted in the Austrian army in 2008. I trained as Panzergrenadier for something like 4-5 weeks, i cant remeber exactley how long, and then i transfered to a logistics unit (the units name could be translated to something like "operation-supply-squadron") where i mostly had to do boring things. No physical training, not exercises of any kind, just paperwork. For some time after basic training i seriously thought about enlisting, but i dropped the idea after half a year of extremly boring duty in said logistics unit.

 

Ah, the logistics. Critical factor considering victory.

 

Professionals concentrate on logistics. For example, Germany have been defeated in two world wars with superior supply and logistics. 

 

Winning a conflict, logistics and supply is far far more important factor than the model of service rifle of the force. Every time when people get over-excited from future weapons and potential new models, I ask them to name me a recent war (in 20th or 21st century), which was won or lost because of the excellence or mediocry of basic infantry rifle? Latest conflicts have been won with totally different weapon systems than service rifles, and especially with superior supply and logistics.

 

Not saying that all the armies should be equipped with bolt action Mausers, Lee-Enfields or Mosins. But saying that current small arms technology have reached a peak, where new substitutes for example for AKs or AR15s won't most likely make a big difference in ending results of possibe conflict. Especially if considering the huge expenses that massive re-armament would cause.

 

Ps. Many recent conflicts have been lost because of lack of motivation to fight and because of politics.

[dan/california]

Served in the Canadian Armed Forces for 17 years. Started in the artillery as a gunner, then went officer after a few years.  Served in 1 Royal Canadian Horse Artillery and 3 Royal Canadian Horse Artillery at various times in my career.  Current status is retired, rank of Captain.

 

Memorable moments:

 

Served as a peacekeeper in Bosnia in 1993.  Back when it was more 'peacemaking' than 'peacekeeping'.  Got lots of stories that I can tell about that experience.

 

As a forward observer, adjusted and fired a 'Fire Mission Division' during one of the few Division exercises the Canadian military did during the 1990s.  About 40 tubes of 105mm and 155mm fired some 160 rounds total rounds for one fire mission.  I am one of only a few artillery officers who have fired a division fire mission from that time period.  I don't think that Canada has done a Division live fire exercise in the last 20 years, near as I can tell, since I took early retirement in 1996.

 

Did a winter exercise for three days of winter warfare training (winter infantry training and living in tents)where the temperature varied between -45 C and -55 C and one of those days, the temperature with windchill was -83 C.   Discovered at those temperatures that a book of matches will burn out while floating in a bowl of white gasoline (used as fuel for lanterns and stoves).

 

I remember the one year where I was unlucky enough to go on three winter exercises back to back and literally, except for two weeks, I humped the boonies and lived in a tent from the beginning of January to the end of March (nearly 3 months) on exercises in Alaska, the Northwest Territories (northern Canada) and Manitoba (center of Canada and the coldest of the provinces in winter).

 

I have been mortared by the 1 PPCLI mortar platoon by accident, fired on by an American 155 gun battery by accident, shot at by a German Leopard 1 tank by accident, and bombed (with practice bombs thankfully) by the Canadian Air Force by accident.  Yeah, training accidents with live ammuniton do happen and can be deadly serious affairs. Had some pretty close calls in Bosnia but someone was actually trying to kill me in those cases, but such is the case in a war zone.   My wife says I got more lives than a cat.

Not working for the recruitment guys, either, are you?

[panzersaurkrautwerfer]

If we're doing stories:

 

I worked in a Joint Operations Cell on Muthana airbase for some months as a very bored, very annoyed 1LT.  We shared the building with our Iraqi counterparts, each unit had its own desk, the hypothetical utility being that if 1-63 AR from the US Army needed to talk to the National Police unit in Ghazalia or something, the representative from each of those units were in the same room.

 

In practice the Iraqis hardly showed up, or showed up, watched porn on their phone, slept, or something along those lines.  Correspondingly, the US element of the JOC increasingly turned to video games (I played the hell out of Company of Heros, CMSF and Halflife 2), movies, and reading books as we had to be there and we actually followed orders.

 

There was an Iraqi Army Captain who was especially annoying to all of us.  When he was awake, he'd press his face against the screen of his big ole' CRT monitor while singing to himself loudly and off key, watching some sort of music videos (alternating between "Allah is the best guy ever" type music and what seriously looked like Bollywood videos, dancers and all).   When he slept, it was like a dumptruck full of running chainsaws going into a shredder level snoring.

 

These two events were universal.  As I arrived at 1945 to start my shift, these events would continue from whenever he showed up, to around 0800 when he relief arrived.  

 

One night after my movies were drowned out by snoring again (I could hear him through the headphones) and at the depths of my professionalism, I started launching rubber bands at him.  I burned through the ones in my drawer, the SFC down the way joined in, and after scavenging some more rounds, I continued the engagement before I made an error and blasted him in the face.

 

He woke up, deeply offended and then forgot about it and went back to rocking out to watching skanky music videos where you could almost see all of the woman's ankle! or something.

 

The next morning I posted on facebook that I had "Shot an Iraqi in the face last night, and I felt nothing" and let that stay up for a few hours before explaining.  Was good times.  

 

 

(As an addendum, I don't dislike all Iraqis, I just know I worked with on occasion an especially useless batch of them for a while)

[LukeFF]

(As an addendum, I don't dislike all Iraqis, I just know I worked with on occasion an especially useless batch of them for a while)

 

LOL, you certainly weren't the only one. I absolutely loathed the days I had to do escort for the ones who would come in to do work for us.

[stealthsilent1]

What's it like with the fear? And the fear at night especially? And seeing all that blood and gore for absolutely nothing, that must destroy you.

[stealthsilent1]

No, I thought of a better question. 

 

How do you deal with the military dogma and the propoganda it constantly feeds you?

 

See, that's a very good question.

[White2Golf]

No, I thought of a better question. 

 

How do you deal with the military dogma and the propoganda it constantly feeds you?

 

See, that's a very good question.

 

From my personal experience, I think calling it "propaganda" is a bit much.   You just learn to know the difference between what is important and what is not.   What makes you want to use the term "propaganda" anyway?   Also, your first question, the part about "for absolutely nothing" is an opinion not a statement of fact.   I would think such a statement would be rather insulting to most guys who got involved.  All that political crap is for Generals and politicians. 

 

My $.02

[Stagler]

No, I thought of a better question. 

 

How do you deal with the military dogma and the propoganda it constantly feeds you?

 

See, that's a very good question.

 

Bad karma that bro.

[panzersaurkrautwerfer]

Re: Fear

 

It's like if you have to cross as series of potentially busy streets to get to work or do anything.  The anxiety builds from the "last time a bus almost ran me over crossing this one!" much more than the bus actually having almost run you over.  During the event you're too focused on the act of not being run over so not much fear there, and outside of circumstances that are a lot like the road you almost got run over on, there's not the context to expect that bus.

 

What can creeps up on you is when things start to align that look, smell and sound a lot like when the bus almost ran you over.  The human brain is awesome at detecting patterns so if stuff starts to really look like that road and that bus it can trigger a response.  Conversely that anxiety eventually goes away as it is readily apparent that the bus is no longer something to worry about.  

 

So in that regard there used to be stuff that I knew from Iraq to be bad signs (empty streets, piles of trash, guys filming stuff, loud noises etc) that would trigger low level anxiety back in the US (I wasn't flinching or hiding under tables, more like some corner of my brain stood to because something was up), but after a few July 4ths passed since I'd been to Iraq, fireworks and the like did not trigger any sort of response, and it has been a while since I had any sort of reaction.

 

I imagine someone with a much more traumatic trip overseas might take a long time to unlearn the really bad stuff.  But it's not like you live in eternal fear of all things, it's just much closer to anxiety.  

 

Re: Blood and gore

 

Only if you knew the person.  The smell of blood and generally body parts in general trigger some sort of "THIS IS BAD PLACE GO AWAY FROM BAD PLACE" response in the lizard corner of your brain.  Once you get over that part, if there's no danger to you (the attack is over), and you're not especially attached to the body parts source of origin it's just unpleasant.

 

I mean I carried a human hand from a suicide bomber around in my backpack (in a baggie).  I still use that backpack lots without any real feelings that the hand is HAUNTING MY ARMY BACKPACK OH DOG WAY.  The dead can't hurt you, blood carries infections pathogens, not bad juju so it's something best not to cover yourself in it, but it's not something to freak out about too much.

 

The much more unpleasant part is when you have wounded and you need to do "something" about it.  Because you're attached to the keeping someone alive and intact it's quite stressful when you're in a position where you cannot do anything for them (in my case just the practical reality that the medics were already working on them, and I had nothing to do with evacuating them).

 

Re: Propaganda and dogma

 

I received several times as much in the military, as I did in college.  The yay Army stuff was way less aggressive than GO TEAM GO during football season, and the "You are in Iraq to help people" was only mentioned in passing compared to the more realistic "You are in Iraq to help train and equip the blah blah blah partner units blah blah blah in conjunction with other agencies blah blah restore blah to blah."

 

Dissent was fairly freely expressed among peers.  There really just wasn't much of a sense of being indoctrinated.

Edited January 29, 2015 by panzersaurkrautwerfer

[agusto]

I really like your response, it seems to be very honest.

 

But what about the killing? Did you ever kill someone in combat? How did you feel about it? Emotionally, i mean, not from a rational point if view. I hope that question is not too personal.

 

I have never killed a man. I can only somwhat image what it may feel like to shoot a man from my experience with killing animals. The first time i killed an anmial was when i was like 10, i was fishing with my family and i really found it difficult at fiirst. There is another living beeing, and may it only be a fish, that has eyes like you and bleeds like you and is able to experience pain and you are supposed to take a club smash its head in. I really found it difficult to kill at first. But after getting over that initial "barrier", i really liked it. I felt like a predator and catching my prey gave me some kind of satisfaction. Also i had a good moral justification for killing these fish because we barbecued and ate them afterwards .

[Splinty]

I agree with Panzerkrautwerfer on all counts. I really didn't hear much in the way of dogma or propaganda in any of my deployments, we were there to do a job and we did the job as best we were able. On my return to the US I heard far more propaganda coming out of the media than the military.

[agusto]

Well the US Army is an army of volunteers. I dont think that someone who says "yeah, i want to be a soldier and i accept all the risks and responsibilities that come with it" needs a lot of indoctrination in order to be motivated.

[A Canadian Cat]

It's like if you have to cross as series of potentially busy streets to get to work or do anything.  The anxiety builds from the "last time a bus almost ran me over crossing this one!" much more than the bus actually having almost run you over.  During the event you're too focused on the act of not being run over so not much fear there, and outside of circumstances that are a lot like the road you almost got run over on, there's not the context to expect that bus.

 

What can creeps up on you is when things start to align that look, smell and sound a lot like when the bus almost ran you over.  The human brain is awesome at detecting patterns so if stuff starts to really look like that road and that bus it can trigger a response.  Conversely that anxiety eventually goes away as it is readily apparent that the bus is no longer something to worry about.  

 

So in that regard there used to be stuff that I knew from Iraq to be bad signs (empty streets, piles of trash, guys filming stuff, loud noises etc) that would trigger low level anxiety back in the US (I wasn't flinching or hiding under tables, more like some corner of my brain stood to because something was up), but after a few July 4ths passed since I'd been to Iraq, fireworks and the like did not trigger any sort of response, and it has been a while since I had any sort of reaction.

Nice explanation. If you think about it like that you can really appreciate how sometimes people get stuck in a loop that is hard to get out of.

[panzersaurkrautwerfer]

Clarification:

 

To establish I'm not a ghoul or wasn't saving the hand "for later" I happened to be heading to a base that had a US run forensics lab on it, and they wanted to try to get fingerprints off of the hand (and it was better described as "hand, fragment" on the bag, it was missing the whole thumb assembly).  The backpack is just the standard issue "Assault Pack" I was issued, and I've never thought to get a new one (and I plan on keeping it once I separate because it is one of the few items I have had everywhere I went in the military).  

 

On Killing:

 

Never had to do it.  By the time I went to Iraq the direct fire shooting Iraqis sort of events were largely gone, the Iraqis had gotten their teeth kicked in and now only attacked via IED, mortars/rockets, and some limited shoot and scoot type attacks.*  The most damage we'd gather evidence from the attacks or other illegal activities (like fingerprints found on weapons in caches) and then go do a SWAT team style arrest.  They usually weren't expecting us to come for them in their house/did not understand our ability to find both them and what they had left at the attack scene so mostly it was dragging off confused terrorists into the night (we made a few bad busts largely thanks to informants being....special**, but the guys we tagged usually had left fignerprints on the bombs they planted, or we'd intercepted phone calls that amounted to "praise allah, I hope to kill many americans with this bomb I shall plant" and we found the bomb in their bathroom or something).

 

On the occasion were the ambushes went bad and we had a shot at people, it was an oddly remote thing, like a sports team you liked scored a point.  So you felt sort of good, but it was not elation, nor any sort of mixed emotions as the person killed was 100% bad guy trying to kill people you knew.  

 

The only "dead" person that bothered me especially deeply was we had a woman get dropped off at our JSS (Joint Security Station like a small FOB, but with Iraqi forces also working out of it).  She had "tried to commit suicide" by dousing herself with gasoline (her husband set her on fire was both the subtext, suspicion, and given what we knew the most likely scenario), and her other family had wrapped her up in a blanket to transport her to us with the expectations we'd be able to do something for her.  At that point we were no longer allowed to treat or evacuate Iraqis that had not been A. Injured by US forces, B. Were in a danger of death, losing eyesight, or a limb without immediate medical attention***.  The blanket had fused to her burned skin, but she was not close enough to death to mandate we treat or evacuate her.  So our only recourse was to have the Iraqis on our compound evacuate her to an Iraqi hospital.  The Iraqi police unit refused to have anything to do with it.  Like it just wasn't worth the attention, allah will sort it out, we're eating lunch/playing cards/almost time for prayer and simply cannot be bothered.

 

Eventually after much screaming they tossed her in the back of one of their pickups and went somewhere.  Maybe a hospital, maybe a ditch, maybe back to her husband, who knew.  It was a singularly depressing occasion at the end of it.

 

Re: Army of Volenteers

 

You still have a wide range of why people sign up.  The die hard I <3 America! type is not as common as you'd think.  Marginally more patriotic than average is how I would describe the average US serviceperson, but in the "I love America as a societal/cultural concept" vs "I love the American government and its policies without question" sense.  There were a lot of tattoos, flags, and pride in the country as a concept, but when all the junior enlisted were out, the senior enlisted, and officers talked a lot of "what the hell are we thinking" about what the country was up to at the moment.  

 

*The preferred method in our AO was using the old Russian RKG-3 Anti-Tank grenades.  They'd pitch a few of them from an alleyway or a crowd then run like hell.  Funny story about them sometime when I'm bored.

**Another amusing story for some othertime.

***It wasn't a cold "Iraqis are not worth American medical attention!" system, but it was the realization that US bases had become the defacto hospitals for the local communities.  At a time in which we were trying to build up the Iraqis enough to leave, it was deemed essential to only treat what we absolutely had to, to force people to start using Iraqi hospitals, so those hospitals would actually be ready when we left instead of just suddenly "poof" US forces leave and no one can handle anything more than a papercut.

[rai kitsune]

Currently serving my 7th year in the RAF as a ground photographer. I've spent most of my career with the RAF Regiment and the Army so i'm not very "blue"