Bluesman

Absolutely right. Military life puts you in daily contact with some of the best and the worst people you will ever meet in your life.

Wouldn't trade a day of it for civvie life, and I know the day I leave it is the day I'll start missing it.

But then again, I'm STRANGE like that.

__________________
"The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it, and if one finds the prospect of a long war intolerable, it is natural to disbelieve in the possibility of victory."
- George Orwell

dalem

Here's what I've noticed growing up as a civvie with some military buddies:

1) Army guys - stories involve a surprising amount of nudity during training schools. My favorite was the one about Ranger School almost-grads jousting in darkened hallways with hockey sticks, on rollerblades, naked and covered in green chemlite goo.

(And the Bad Guys think they have a chance against us!

2) Marines - surprisingly serious stories.

3) USAF aircrews - stories involving onboard fires at altitude, told with interesting nonchalance.

4) Navy guys - stories involving hookers in foreign ports of call.

Dunno if that's standard, but that's how I have it all filed in my head.

-dale

Franco Lolan

The music teacher at our school (Mr. Kevin McDonald) served his time in USN. Served as naval intelligence aboard a ship (sry, cant remember which). He has great stories about boot camp and service. Maybe tell tommorow. I have AP Literature exam tommorow. Please pray for me.

Shek

A slight tangent on the subject, but your Navy summary seems to ring true. I don't know if the following comments are real or not, but they are supposedly lifted straight from some officer evaluations, and I posted the one below that would second your Navy story.

http://www.cabarfeidh.com/OfficersCRs.htm

"This Medical Officer has used my ship to carry his genitals from port to port, and my officers to carry him from bar to bar. "

Anon

LOL!

Oh man....having that statement in your personel jacket can't be good.

sniperdude411

Now can you tell me how to land a nice job in the Army quick? I'm currently is many Honors classes (goin' AP soon), got lots of respect, more fit than most people (Almost made Presidential fitness awards), etc. etc.
What would be a fun job for me?

TopHatter

Based on the several buddies of mine that were and are USN....I would say that is probably accurate

__________________
If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.
~John Quincy Adams

Shek

Here's an excerpt from the AEI event that I posted the link to. This is part of BG Fastabend's presentation - he is the Deputy Direction of the Army's Futures Center. Interesting info on KE weapons. Please excuse the typos from the transcript.
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"But even today we also have to anticipate we have a future, and so what do we think the future is going to be like? It's probably a safe guess that the future is going to be a lot of what we're experiencing today, but it would be foolish on our part ,I think, to assume that the future is going to be exactly what we have today. There is a lot of evidence that one of the significant dimensions of the future is going to be what we call hyperkinetic threats. Hyperkinetic threats would be along the lines of what we could feel today if we chose to, weapons like line-of-sight antitank or C-CHEM (ph).

These are weapons amount of kinetic energy on a target, a tremendous amount of kinetic energy. LOSAT, you can mount four on a Humvee and you can put 43 megajoules of energy on a target. For the few of you who are not physicists, 43 megajoules of energy compares to about the theoretical maximum you will ever get out of 120 millimeter main gun of 12. That's a lot of energy. Armor technology always advances, but if you could somehow absorb this amount of energy without fracturing or without melting, you would physically displace a main battle tank 700 meters.

The Russians just publicly put on the market an RPG that penetrates a meter of steel. Pete Corelli's division had 70 main battle tank combat losses over the course of a year. I'm really not ready to put the future of the Army and the nation on the assumption that passive armor is the wave of the future forever. We need a hybrid mix of solutions."

Anon

"Pete Corelli's division had 70 main battle tank combat losses over the course of a year."

Who?

sniperdude411

"These are weapons amount of kinetic energy on a target, a tremendous amount of kinetic energy. LOSAT, you can mount four on a Humvee and you can put 43 megajoules of energy on a target. For the few of you who are not physicists, 43 megajoules of energy compares to about the theoretical maximum you will ever get out of 120 millimeter main gun of 12. That's a lot of energy. Armor technology always advances, but if you could somehow absorb this amount of energy without fracturing or without melting, you would physically displace a main battle tank 700 meters."

Wow. That's all I ned to say.

Shek

It should be Chiarelli, who was the CG for the 1st Cav Div that fought in Sadr City, Najaf, Fallujah. That's what you get when you have someone transcribe from a tape that doesn't know the subject.