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Military service of soldiers.


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Ha, quoted for truth.   They certainly do not show you the part about trying to disconnect the damn saddle bolts for the pack at 3am in -20 degree weather.   Or the part where you give yourself a hernia trying to help get the track you just threw right side up. Or the part....   You get the idea.  :)

 

I was an enlisted armor crewman so the mileage may vary from the officer types.   But I would say for every hour of "this is awesome" there was 10 hours of "this sucks".  LOL

As a former Mech Infantry enlisted type, I totally agree, plus I got to go on long walks with lot's of heavy stuff, yay!

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Conscript in the German army for one year in the early 90s. My 'oh crap' moment was during basic training when our Hauptmann came over and told us that there was a revolution in Russia (the one with Jeltsin). If that had escalated I would have been automatically enlisted for an indefinite time. Yeah, great - just when the cold war was supposedly over.

 

Served in the canteen for the rest of the time but did not peel the infamous 'Für Schweinemast und Bundeswehr' ('For hog feeding and Bundeswehr') potatoes. :P

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Since Poesel too was a draftee I jump into the thread. 1 year in the '80 in a artillery rgt. Barracks was so close the yugoslavian border that you almost could throw a stone and hit a "graniciari", yugo's border guards, in the head. Anyway was a really quiet period. There were people of my unit sometimes crossing the border in civilian clothes in order to join some local festival on the other side.post-66270-0-40270400-1421497029_thumb.j Patrol. Yugoslavian hills in the background.

Edited by Sandokan
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2010-2011 BTR-80 Operator (Driver), western military district. 

 

If we go by "oh crap" moments, three APC's sinking into a bog one after another because our CO decided to play the tactician would be one of the best. Taking them out wasn't as fun as getting stuck though. 

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Does living in Crimea and making missions for CMBS qualify for military service?  :D How about playing in large autonomous Arma community while using RL based TTPs?   :P

Haven't served, but it's nice to see that there are other Russians here, and large amount of them have actually served. Pity haven't gotten to that fact earlier this year. Well, I hope we'd get some time to catch up on that later.

Edited by L0ckAndL0ad
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As a former Mech Infantry enlisted type, I totally agree, plus I got to go on long walks with lot's of heavy stuff, yay!

 

The most monstrous thing the Army ever did with the Combined Arms Battalion was trapping tankers in any unit with 9th Infantry Regiment lineage.  I AM A TANKER WHY AM I WALKING THIS IS TERRIBLE.

 

 

 

Everyone knows that a soldier with free time is a disaster waiting to happen. 

Speaking as former wrangler of Soldiers, not exactly untrue.  Every sad story about why you're picking someone up from the MP station starts with "well sir, me and my buddies were bored and....."

 

My dudes were pretty good (just your usual underage drinking and infrequent barracks fights), but the robotripping duo that was in the neighboring mech infantry company, and the FSC sex ring were both good for a chuckle. 

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Peeling potatoes is a supreme way to occupy a soldier. Everyone knows that a soldier with free time is a disaster waiting to happen.

Buhahahhahaha! :D

May I add picking up all the sticks from nearby forest or collecting cones for several hours. ;)

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I AM A TANKER WHY AM I WALKING THIS IS TERRIBLE.

 

That was one of the main reasons I wanted to become a vehicle operator actually. My Father was a career officer in the 336th Naval infantry brigade back in the 80's, so I heard plenty horror stories not to use feet as my main locomotion in the army.   

Edited by BTR
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Enlisted in the regular United States Marine Corps (USMC) at 19. Served four years as an F4-B, RF4-B, and F4-J hydraulic/pneumatic mechanic, and six months as a cell-block sentry in a "red-line" brig (as part of a fleet augmentation program). Deployed to Fleet Marine Force, Western Pacific (FMFPac) and spent a year in Iwakuni, Japan. I believe I was one of four Marines who never went to Viet Nam. Largest "pucker factor" was when I was on duty as Assistant Squadron Duty Officer (aka radio watch), and a North Korean cruiser shot down an American weather plane over the Straits of Japan. Two squadrons of F4s, two squadrons of A4s, and two squadrons of A6s scrambled with armor piercing bombs and rockets. The Wing Commanding General came into our ready room and kept the 60 plus combat airplanes from obliterating that crusier.

 

I then served eight years in the USMC reserves (USMCR) as infantry; 0311 - rifleman, 0331 M-60 machine gun section leader, 0341 60-mm M2 mortar section leader, and finally 0369 - Infantry, Small Unit Leader (rifle platoon sgt). Biggest pucker factor in reserves was when we were "activated" for a three-day readiness test that seemed an awful lot like Staging (where as "airwingers" we refreshed our infantry skills before deploying to FMFPac). Learned about 10-years later that it wasn't a test. We were being activated to invade Iran to rescue the hostages. The Soviets had our Navy Crypto codes and massed 26 divisions on the border. They said "if you invade, we will drive you out. Carter called off the invasion. Got out of reserves in 1981. Qualified evey year with M-14 rifle at 500 yds, M-16 at 300 yds (all with open sights), and M1911A1 .45 caliber pistol at throwing distance (my issued pistol was manufactured by Singer Sewing Machine Co. in 1943, so it was a bit loose, that is to say worn out).

 

At that time, the transportation for Marine Infantry was primarily "leather." Our normal combat load out was helmet, flak jacket, two canteens of water, eight 20-round magazines for an M-14 or eight 30-round magazines for the M-16, four fragmentation grenades, two claymore mines, two 60mm mortar rounds if the platoon had mortars attached, two boxes of 7.62mm rounds if we had M-60 machine guns attached, six to eight 40mm grenades for the M-79 "blooper" and if unlucky, an M-72 rocket launcher. Add to that three meals, clothing changes, health and comfort items, and we generally weighed in a more than 100 lbs (45kg) over our normal weight. Maybe that's why they referred to us as "heavy infantry." :D

 

I had very little work with "combined arms" when infantry, and the lethality of Black Sea weapons absolutely terrorfies me. I wouldn't want to "see the elephant" in this new environment.

Edited by Vet 0369
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Our normal combat load out was helmet, flak jacket, two canteens of water,

 

those steel pots helmets surely made for some strong neck muscles ;) I remember them in the canadian reserve back in the nineties (before the kevlar stuff). They don't protect you much and weight a ton. Kevlar is so much better. 

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Just passed my 7th year of service in the British Army. Did 1 year and 3 months of initial and combat infantryman's training which was.... horrific! Joined the 1st Battalion the Royal Anglian Regiment (Vikings) and was deployed to Afghanistan in late 2009. My company was posted to Musa Qaleh in Helmand province, IED's and small arms were common and a couple of times we encountered some very close IDF from an AGS-17 the Taliban had acquired which was probably the scariest thing I've ever come up against. Handed the AO over to the USMC at the end of tour and we freaked the **** out of them and stole an entire pallet of Gatorade, sorry about that!

 

I deployed to Kenya on exercise in 2011 and nearly got killed by an elephant, this sucked.

 

2012 saw me return to Helmand Province as an IED detection dog handler and my pooch found the largest IED of the summer campaign. Transferred to become a dog handler in the Royal Army Veterinary Corps and its where I'm at now.

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those steel pots helmets surely made for some strong neck muscles  :)  I remember them in the canadian reserve back in the nineties (before the kevlar stuff). They don't protect you much and weight a ton. Kevlar is so much better. 

Ah, but we could hang them over a fire and cook in them or heat water to shave (if you actually needed to shave) or for a sponge bath: so many uses for it :P

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Just passed my 7th year of service in the British Army. Did 1 year and 3 months of initial and combat infantryman's training which was.... horrific! Joined the 1st Battalion the Royal Anglian Regiment (Vikings) and was deployed to Afghanistan in late 2009. My company was posted to Musa Qaleh in Helmand province, IED's and small arms were common and a couple of times we encountered some very close IDF from an AGS-17 the Taliban had acquired which was probably the scariest thing I've ever come up against. Handed the AO over to the USMC at the end of tour and we freaked the **** out of them and stole an entire pallet of Gatorade, sorry about that!

 

I deployed to Kenya on exercise in 2011 and nearly got killed by an elephant, this sucked.

 

2012 saw me return to Helmand Province as an IED detection dog handler and my pooch found the largest IED of the summer campaign. Transferred to become a dog handler in the Royal Army Veterinary Corps and its where I'm at now.

You are one intelligent man! I broke up laughing when I read the part about stealing the pallet of Gatorade. Marines in my time were known for their "midnight acqusitions" of Army, Airforce, or Navy supplies. We never considered it to be stealing because it was going to us anyway. We were just cutting out the middle men :rolleyes:

 

Most people don't know this, but we have a tradition in the USMC called Mess Dress Night when all the Officers and Staff NCOs in the company gather for a very, very formal dress uniform dinner. It's about a seven-course meal with a different wine at every course and all of the obligatory toasts. What people don't know is that our first toast isn't to the President of the United States, it is to the Queen. That signifies our roots in the British Royal Marines at the start of the American Revolution. The second toast is to the President. The first course is brought to the President of the Mess (the Senior Officer) who tastes the food and declares it "Unfit for human consumption." We can then begin dining.

Edited by Vet 0369
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I remember that in front of our barrack there was a large rock that seemingly often needed to be painted a different color.  Salary was difficult to obtain, but the budget was always available for paint for that rock.

It seems every Army has a surplus of paint. In the '80 we still had the M33 helmet (yes, 33 means 1933) and a guy of the armory told me that they were repainted regularly every 3-4 years.
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I have a question for US soldiers, Did you guys get beat up during your army service? And would you guys mind telling me what was the hardest part of your service for you personally? I always wondered what the US soldier would go through.

I can't talk for the Soldiers here but the hardest thing about basic training for the USAF in my opinion was folding my clothes properly. No matter how hard I tried I just couldn't get all the seams of my underwear to line up right. And no, I'm not kidding. That was probably the hardest thing I endured in basic.

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I can't talk for the Soldiers here but the hardest thing about basic training for the USAF in my opinion was folding my clothes properly. No matter how hard I tried I just couldn't get all the seams of my underwear to line up right. And no, I'm not kidding. That was probably the hardest thing I endured in basic.

Interesting I'm not sure if your saying it was easy for you or that was really the hardest thing that happens but for me everything about basic training was hard in the VDV, Wake up early in the morning dress up in 1 minute and half go for 5 KM run sometimes in full gear. If you failed to dress up in minute and half you would get a hit or two and assigned to duty after training for that day, But this was the least if you ask me there were way more harder things that happen.

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Beatings are pretty uncommon.  I can only recall one Soldier who'd clearly had the crap kicked out of him, but it was the same kid that had just been caught at an airport wearing a uniform with sergeant's stripes (he was a private first class), and special forces unit markings (he was definitely not one of those).  Came in one morning with a broken arm.  Fell down a flight of stairs, yet lived on the first floor of the barracks.

 

In terms of difficulty sort of two things:

 

1. The end training event for Armor Officer's course went I went through was a 10 day field exercise.  You only got to sleep between the hours of 0000-0300 with 33% security (so one in three guys had to be up).  You were also still preparing missions, orders, briefings and executing missions on this amount of sleep.  If you failed a mission you could have to restart the whole four month course all over, or even be booted from the armor branch.  

 

By the end of it people were starting to hallucinate levels of fatigue.  And the scenerios were all built specifically to go haywire from the start.

 

Like my mission went from going to a friendly village to question an informant, to seizing a terrorist, then the locals rioted, we got ambushed, and then once we dropped off the prisoner they hit us again and had us go secure a pipeline.  We got held up on the way because one of the other platoon's hallucinated some opposing force roleplayers and got in a firefight with some trees before we could get around them.  

 

Was crazy.  Fun at times, but making your brain still work when you've been up effectively for almost a week was hard.

 

2. When you're actually downrange how little what power you may have means.  Like you've got your 30-40 dudes, you've got rocket launchers, grenades, machine guns, demolition, on your trucks you've got .HMGs, AGLs, etc, etc, and all of it will do precisely nothing to unkill the dead children from the last suicide bomber, and no matter how smart, clever or motivated you are, the Iraqis that "mission accomplished" relies on are not smart, not clever, and certainly not motivated, and they'd like you to stop bothering them so you can go win the war on their behalf.  

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That drill is similar to one I participated in,  Our company was parachuted and our objective was to take over a town which was basically 6 buildings and each was 2 to 4 stories high. Long story short after taking the objective my squad was to set up camp in the woods and provide defense which it was 1 week long, And my unit ran out of rations so we had to hunt and we starved during the duration and still had to do objectives such as move 3 kilometers north to ambush a squad. And then we would get ambushed and then repeat. We were ambushed and were given objectives only and we were starving it was horrible... And on top of that our extraction was to run another few kilometers and make it to armored personal carriers in a given time. This is not standard training but a drill to check combat readiness of units. 

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