The Commissar Posted January 10, 2001 Share Posted January 10, 2001 Interesting info, all of you, to say the least. I/O Error, the only thing which really hinders my resolve to join the Russian armed forces is the over-all poor situation, funding, leadership, and morale at this time. Thing is, I plan (or hope to, the better word for this would be) land a small position of command, like a platoon or lieutenant, through college programs and training. I guess this might seem that I am "afraid to get in the mud" but it's not that - I enjoy the feeling of at least being partially responsible for the way things turn out in a fire fight, as silly as that must sound. I think my best bet for this would be through college first, which I plan to do, or West Point of course. I would not be able to get into WP (Im not exactly stupid, but below WP's very high expectations), so college seems to be the only choice, hopefully a military one. Since I was not educated in Russia, I would also not be able to go to a military academy there, seeing as my overall learning skills in the language go as far as 3rd grade level (the grade in which I moved to the States). Im looking for the best way I can play this out, and its all quite a bit confusing. ROTC seems to be an option, though. Anyone have any real experience with this? ------------------ "...Every position, every meter of Soviet soil must be defended to the last drop of blood..." - Segment from Order 227 "Not a step back" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
I/O Error Posted January 10, 2001 Share Posted January 10, 2001 Speaking from second-hand knowledge: My school (Rochester Institute of Technology) has a lot of ROTC students, with all major branches represented. All the ROTC guys I know have told me how rewarding their program is and how much they like it. I would recommend ROTC. Good leaders are always a good thing to see! I have a personal bias towards liking the Army, but here's the traditional stereotypes for you to compare: Army: Too dumb to do anything else Navy: Too damn clean for their own good Air Force: Work two hours, sit like pussies for 22 Marines: They just crazy, man... Interservice rivalry is all joking of course, but that's a pretty accurat look at how each of the services look at each other. IMPORTANT: PLEASE, for the Love of God, stick with the knowledge of Russian you have. I will tell you right now that that skill will give you HUGE benefits for military service, especially since the USA is considering asking Russia to join NATO in the not-so-distant future... Knowing an Allies national language is a skill the recruiters will be DROOLING over to get. Ya never know man, Russia and the US might just be best friends very soon. I would highly recommend military service. I just had to try to make sure you were serious in my earlier (and somewhat brutal) posts. Sorry about that, just felt it had to be done. Go for ROTC. Interesting side note: The US Army is scrapping it's old motto of "Be All That You Can Be" and turning it into "An Army of One" The new commercials will air during Friends and the Simpsons. (They got flak over always advertising during sporting events, so they broadened the advertising range) Instead of telling people about the monetary benefits, the advertisements will attempt to show people that the Army's strength is in each individual. ------------------ Honor, Duty, Courage. Valhalla awaits you, honorable warrior... ------------------------ "If you find yourself alone, riding through green fields with the sun on your face, do not be troubled, for you are in Elysium, and YOU ARE ALREADY DEAD!" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jasoncawley@ameritech.net Posted January 10, 2001 Share Posted January 10, 2001 On the subject of Germans in the Foreign Legion (not just SS by any means), see in particular Bernard Fall's books on the French in Vietnam, "Street Without Joy" and "Dien Bien Phu". There were entire battalions of this description, and the Viet Minh wiped many of them out. By the time of the Algeria war there were fewer, but they seem to have left a (black) mark on the French Paras in particular, after their service together in Vietnam. As for the fellows thoughts on what to do himself, a few pieces of advice. #1 is to understand that Napoleon was right when he said that the principle requirement of a soldier is a willingness to bear hardship. Be sure that is something you can do and will glory in doing, instead of suffering it as an affront. #2 is that I would advise you to concentrate most on fitness and conditioning and self-discipline. Young men interested in the military are often full of thoughts on tactics and want to make a study of it, and that is all to the good. But it is not soldiering, and the time for it will come later. Many young men find the idea of the calling attractive, then later find they do not have the temperment for real discipline and subordination to superiors and the extreme physical demands of service life. It also helps to be a neatness freak in every respect, polite, formal, and reserved to an extreme degree compared to civilian life. #3 is a practical fact about military organizations, which can prove disillusioning or act as a pitfall. Large bureaucracies do not care about your ambitions. If you expect a particular branch of service, program of training, rank after completing xyz, then have every i dotted and t crossed before you put your name to paper. Yes, you may want later to switch to another specialty, or to attend this or that school, which you will have to qualify for. But do not expect things to "work out later", or to bend to your desired career path. Plan ahead and insist on things before you get in. The bureaucracy is at its most reasonable when it still wants to recruit you; use that. ROTC is a fine start of that process, but plan it much farther ahead that that. Like, "I will be a jump-qualified captain in the airborne by this date of my career, with a company command", then work backward from that to everything else you need to make it so. Ask people what those "everythings" are, and not your recruiters or ROTC superiors, but vets who have done it or are in that position now. The last large item, #4, I would advise you about the thing that actually makes military life attractive and rewarding, at least to those with the temperment for it. The military runs on honor, on the known praise and high opinion of capable superiors for true ability. Honor is valuable in proportion to its scarcity, and the justice with which it is dispensed. The way the military makes men crave honor more than life itself, is to reduce the regular supply of honor and respect to starvation levels, then to hand out praise with an eye dropper. This is not to everyone's taste, to say the least. I have one other reading recommendation for you. It is a book on early fighting by the U.S. in Vietnam called "We were soldiers once and young", by General Moore and Joe Galloway. I particularly call your attention to chapter 15 "Night Fighters", and a young man (at the time) named Myron Diduryk, who was an infantry company captain in the 101st Airborne. Diduryk was Ukrainian. General Moore has this to say about him - "He was eager and aggressive yet totally professional; over the next three days and nights he would emerge as the finest battlefield company commander I had ever seen, bar none. He operated on the basic principle of maximum damage with minimum loss." You might find him an interesting character. Whatever you decide to do, the best of luck to you. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
I/O Error Posted January 12, 2001 Share Posted January 12, 2001 Jason: Excellently put. Couldn't have said it better myself. Definitely listen to Jason, Commissar. ------------------ Honor, Duty, Courage. Valhalla awaits you, honorable warrior... ------------------------ "If you find yourself alone, riding through green fields with the sun on your face, do not be troubled, for you are in Elysium, and YOU ARE ALREADY DEAD!" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PawBroon Posted January 13, 2001 Share Posted January 13, 2001 As a french and having family member served as officer in time of crisis I should add my 2 cents to the SS in the Foreign Legion thingy. At the times of the Indochina war, many former members of the Wermacht and SS were indeed fighting as the bulk of the legion. By then most of the commands were issued in german even though French is to be the traditional langage of the Legion. I have scores of books and anecdotes about those. Mind you they are obviously FRENCH so most won't help you lot at all. Just so that you know, when you're a legionneer you're not french nor anything, you're a legionneer. The Foreign Legion only obey to it's own kind. They do NOT take orders from anybody else. The now disbanded 1stREP (Para) had the reputation to never shook hands with non legionneer because they weren't doing their share of the fight. After officer school in France ONLY the major could ask to be an officer in the Legion. If you're a Cpt and want to join, you end up as a Pvt. Only after 5 years of contract are you given French citizenship and could do something else. In between you are no one but a legionneer, you have no paper and no nothing. People queueing up to enlist are NUMEROUS and the selection process is quite harsh as a result. This outfit is only some odd 7000 troops in time of peace and is known as one of the best outfit all around. Along with some other choc troops in France (where you couldn't enlist for lack of french citizenship) they are the most heavily engaged troops of the Army. Tradition has it that a legionneer is to fight till the last man (Camerone) and because its parade walk is slower than the rest of the army, they always come last in the parade. they are the MOST heavily applauded troops coming in right with the firefighters. If you wish to enroll any embassade or consulate should help you in the process. ------------------ You are not Obsessive-CMpulsive, you are Allied-Retentive. Mark IV Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest wwb_99 Posted January 16, 2001 Share Posted January 16, 2001 I saw the legionaires on Bastille Day in Paris ('99). The applause comment rings very true. They also looked to be about 20 lbs. (~8 kilos) heavier than everyone else. WWB ------------------ Before battle, my digital soldiers turn to me and say, Ave, Caesar! Morituri te salutamus. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LongLeftFlank Posted January 21, 2001 Share Posted January 21, 2001 The Vietnam memoir by the ex-SS Legionnaire (Karl Wegener) referred to earlier in this post is "Devil's Guard". It's a nice tale, and has some good tactical information, but large parts of it are clearly fictional. Don't read it as history. The sequel, "Recall to Inferno" which features scenes where the Germans seize Viet Minh tanks and use them against their owners, discover a Communist spy in their midst who was a former death camp guard, or make phosgene gas and wipe out an entire VC camp border on comic book plots. You can probably pass on it unless you like this stuff. Sounds like this guy Wegener would have been a real pisser to serve with though -- lots of BS and tall tales to fill the boring hours and take your mind off the skeeters. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
curih Posted January 21, 2001 Share Posted January 21, 2001 I/O Error, RIT huh? Me too. curih Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Dorosh Posted January 23, 2001 Share Posted January 23, 2001 <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by crepitis: Just saw a programme on British TV on Sunday night about a group of ukrainians who fought for the SS under the name of the Galician Division (or something like that).At the end of the war 1200 of these men were allowed to enter the U.K.,where,apparently,many of them still live.This was despite the fact that their unit actively assisted the EinsatzGruppen in what was described in the programme as "pacifying" two Polish villages in retaliation for the killing by partisans of an SS officer.They were responsible for the murder of over 300 men,women and children (some as young as 3 years old)during this one incident alone.However the release of previously secret British Govt documents showed that the British were prepared to turn a blind eye to this in return for assistance from the units members in setting up covert groups to infiltrate Russian territory during the cold war!It seems political expediency beats morality hands-down any day of the week.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Check out the forum at www.feldgrau.com - apparently that show was very seriously flawed. My militia unit here in Canada had a long serving NCO who started in the fallschirmjaeger, fought at Crete, Monte Cassino, Gran Sasso Raid (so he said anyway), won the German Cross in Gold - and after the war joined the Legion, to fight at Dien Bien Phu. He came to Canada and served here for over a dozen years. Germany didn't want him back, so he sent his medals back and told (the government?) to stuff them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cwhit21 Posted January 25, 2001 Share Posted January 25, 2001 Originally posted by Neil Kemp: My Warrent Officer (A senior NCO in the Canadian Forces) was ex Hitler Youth. The guy was amazing. I once saw him cut a figure 11 target (upright human) in half at 150 meters with a 30 cal (BAR) while he was standing upright and firing from the hip in full auto. He claims he shot a Mustang down that way, and I believe him. He could out walk, out fight, out shoot anybody in the regiment I must say that is some crazy **** Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
I/O Error Posted January 26, 2001 Share Posted January 26, 2001 I'm telling ya man, some of the troops in the world. And what else CAN they do after they'd joined the Hitler Jugen at 14 and had been combat soldiers for their entire lives? I mean, they LITERALLY could not do anything else! It was all they KNEW!! ------------------ Honor, Duty, Courage. Valhalla awaits you, honorable warrior... ------------------------ "If you find yourself alone, riding through green fields with the sun on your face, do not be troubled, for you are in Elysium, and YOU ARE ALREADY DEAD!" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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