Upon the Army and service

[Don Coyote]

I love the Army in a sick and twisted way. I hate that I love it. I love to hate it.

The Army, she, pisses me off with her horrible supply system and unhelpful nomenclature for various bits of equipment.

I originally joined to do a job I was doing already, but was denied due to my vision. I picked another job that I lost because I can't keep my mouth shut on certain things. I had at the end the choice of truck driver, fueler, infantryman and unit supply. I refuse to be a truck driver because my step-dad is one. I refuse to be a fueler because I would rather not be around that much volatile liquid . I didn't go infantry because my GOOD eye barely qualified me for it and therefore I felt it would be a bad bad bad idea. I was probably wrong. So I picked unit supply, thinking I would be working in a warehouse, which is a totally different job .

I still resent that chain of events because while I messed up a chance, it was really just the pinky finger of the Army going up my ass, and things would be worse. So it would stand to reason I would HATE basic combat training, and I didn't. BCT is easy, my drill sergeants were relatively nice. Bear in mind in the "new" Army NCOs can't lay hands on soldiers, and some cock nozzle screaming in my face isn't going to hurt my feelings. I even let that tiny bit of "soldierization" take place. Of course we were still being taught Vietnam style land tactics.

But it went downhill from there. I went to Advanced Individual Training to be taught my job. This is how fucked up my AIT company was, I looked at my soldier's records today, and my boss's and one of friend's. They all had their regimental affilation listed. I don't. Still. I didn't even know that it was supposed to be on it. In addition to a medal that is supposed to be awarded to all soldiers who served during this particular group of wars. But it gets better. Or worse. I, and my company, got treated worse than I did in BCT. Not abused or anything like that. The apathy of the DSs, commander and 1SG. "Your shit is fucked up but we won't tell you why so you can fix it so you are stuck in the barracks all weekend and by the way I need extra duty detail and even though you aren't fucked up enough for warrant that guess what"

WAAA WAAA. I bet some of you are fucking rolling your eyes and thinking that "hey you fucking signed up, and Army is fucked like that" Well fuck you. Doing work doesn't fucking bother me. Seeing blatant favoritism does and apathy towards the well being of new soldiers is fucking wrong. By the way, tuck your fucking teeth in and don't fucking roll your eyes again.

I am pretty much over that bullshit. I mean it was almost 4 years ago, and it did teach me, as has every other instance where neglect from a superior fucked my shit up, to never leave my soldiers uninformed. BTW did you know that is a line from Creed of the Non-Commissioned Officer? That is three large paragraphs of lip-service that NCOs rote-memorize to pass the promotion board and promptly ignore. Or maybe I am just disgruntled and shit. Well fuck you anyways.

Naturally with my charmed life I didn't go to a company supply room like I should right out of AIT. I went to a battalion S4. I had no fucking clue what that was. No one ever explained that to me. I had a guy who just came back in to the Army after several years and had reclassed and retrained to be supply. With no NCO over us. We had some random master sergeant and some other NCOs but none incharge of our section. We ran ourselves. Even though we had no idea what we were doing. This pretty much continued for the next three years. Of course I did eventually learn what we did, and what we were for and that power point is the fucking devil.

It was because of that lack of supply room time that I refused a waiver offered to me to go the board. Which was the wrong answer. And I still do not know if it was just me that failed myself or my NCOs for not really counseling me.

All you civilians are probably fucking confused.

To boil it down, I was a disgruntled officer worker in a cube, that was trained with and assigned a light machine gun I didn't have a rifle I had machine gun. A fairly small one, but I could take a small group of people or a car out at over 1000 meters with it.

The horribly funny thing is I didn't know all that I knew until I finally got moved into the supply room. Now bear in mind I have been in the same company, at the same duty station for 3 years and 10 months with all but the last 5 or so months in a staff position. I did my job too well, so I became that problem soldier. I suddenly had lots of appointments and was on profile a lot. Everything was legit too  . I actually needed all those appointments with behavioral health for stress management. I realize now that most of my stress was caused by still doing the same fucking thing in the same fucking place, just with different people shifting around me. It didn't help that I still had no idea what a lot of supply related things were.

So at that point I was still mad the battalion and the company and the people in charge for fucking with me, and then suddenly chest pains. For a few weeks. Slowly getting worse and worse. An ER trip at 2000 hours later, and somehow the likely root cause slipped out the battalion commander. I guess some people can't keep a secret. And then I got moved. Of course while I was still there I was taking small amounts of revenge, which I will not detail, but you don't piss off your clerk when your clerk is the only one with email access and the only one maintaining the files.

So I get moved down to the supply room, and shit was, and still is, fucked up. But I like it for some reason, especially now that it isn't my problem. Fuck things being disorganized. I'm leaving. I won't break my back setting up a the filing system, but it does motivate me in a twisted way to stay a logistician when I join the Dark Side. The supply system is fucked up. No one should be going "wtf is this" when reading the nomenclature for something. Computer system digital is not very descriptive when there are roughly 30 different items that are some sort of digital computer. And that is just the tip of things being fucked up at the Big Army level.

"But Coyote, the Army is big and bad and is only a tool of the corporations that control the government"
Eh, so what? I make roughly 45k a year with a little more than high school. I could make over 80k a year without much more than a high school education (after at least 10 years). I get free medical care. I get the good pills, if I want them. I get to play with shit that people PAY to play with. And by "get to" I mean, I am forced to and get paid to do so. And it gets better if I go to college and sell my soul. And btw I can pretty much study whatever the fuck I want. The Army basically only cares that I got a bachelor's degree. When I get done with college I will have over 7 years in service. I'll be getting roughly 65k a year. All so I can run around being retarded while senior NCOs roll their eyes and try to politely tell me that I am full of shit and to let them do their fucking jobs. Of course everything will be my fault. And I will be fucking broke since I am going into the National Guard for the next 3 years, but I will get drill pay, ROTC stipend and GI Bill money (and won't have to pay for college).

For a while I used to feel bad over how powerless I felt about not being able to tell people to fuck off, and how fucked up things in this country are. I wish I could I fix things all over the country, but I can't.

However, if I make it to being an officer, I can do my best to positively affect the lives those people who still enlist. I might not be able to fix the Army, but I might be able to fix small parts of it.

Coyote, ok for now, but go fuck yourselves.

[Placid Dingo]

Thanks for sharing this Coyote, for real. One of the great things about hi forum is having a whole stack of people from different backgrounds, especially when they get into the guts of it so candidly.

[The Rev]

If I had it to do over again I would go career. Seriously. No matter what you end up doing for a living, civilian or military, somebody thinks they own a piece of you. Do your time, move up, retire with full pension and benefits.

Oh, and remember to not give a shit, you will never change anything, so go along and just do what you can to keep those bastards on the lines supplied.

[Doktor Howl]

You can't fix the army, because it isn't broken.  At least not by its own standards.  It does, as Nigel says, exactly what it says on the label. 

[P3nT4gR4m]

Maybe the army has it's own idiosyncrasies but that's all they are. Every walk of life, every job, every career, is a clusterfuck. Seize your slack by the throat whenever you get the opportunity, that's the only thing that matters - the rest is all just bullshit put there to distract you from this most important mission.

[Don Coyote]

You can't fix the army, because it isn't broken.  At least not by its own standards.  It does, as Nigel says, exactly what it says on the label. 

Big Army isn't broken. It's down at the lower levels where things breakdown. No one person would be able to "fix" the Army, and i have no desire to. I do want to have the chance to not be  fucked up CO and the pay looks good.

That it pisses off certain NCOs is a bonus.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

The military is one of the only things about this country that isn't broken.

I'd like to give the Army a chance to vote on health care and payroll for the senate, though. Turnabout's fair play.

[Doktor Howl]

You can't fix the army, because it isn't broken.  At least not by its own standards.  It does, as Nigel says, exactly what it says on the label. 

Big Army isn't broken. It's down at the lower levels where things breakdown. No one person would be able to "fix" the Army, and i have no desire to. I do want to have the chance to not be  fucked up CO and the pay looks good.

That it pisses off certain NCOs is a bonus.

Why the hell, in a fundamentally sick society, would you expect the army to be sane?  Little army works just fine, or big army wouldn't work at all.

Think of the military as a magic barrel of shit.  When we need to, we throw the magic barrel of shit at the people who have annoyed us...and when thrown properly (WWII, Korea, Desert Storm), it makes the problem go away.

But it's still a barrel of shit, and working inside of it isn't always, you know, enjoyable.

That's the GOOD news.  The BAD news is that the shit FOR that barrel comes from the outside, where things are even worse.  You think YOU have stress?  I would trade the rest of my career for your worst day...And I have a GOOD job, by today's standards.

[Don Coyote]

You can't fix the army, because it isn't broken.  At least not by its own standards.  It does, as Nigel says, exactly what it says on the label. 

Big Army isn't broken. It's down at the lower levels where things breakdown. No one person would be able to "fix" the Army, and i have no desire to. I do want to have the chance to not be  fucked up CO and the pay looks good.

That it pisses off certain NCOs is a bonus.

Why the hell, in a fundamentally sick society, would you expect the army to be sane?  Little army works just fine, or big army wouldn't work at all.

Think of the military as a magic barrel of shit.  When we need to, we throw the magic barrel of shit at the people who have annoyed us...and when thrown properly (WWII, Korea, Desert Storm), it makes the problem go away.

But it's still a barrel of shit, and working inside of it isn't always, you know, enjoyable.

That's the GOOD news.  The BAD news is that the shit FOR that barrel comes from the outside, where things are even worse.  You think YOU have stress?  I would trade the rest of my career for your worst day...And I have a GOOD job, by today's standards.

Because I am still tragically naive and not willing to face the reality that is America^TM? To be honest I hope that I maintain that bit of "WTF AND WHY THE FUCK IS THIS SHIT FUCKED UP IN THIS PARTICULAR MANNER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" I don't beat myself up over shit that I can't really fix anymore.




And I suddenly need to prank the supply sergeant. Now I just need to figure out how to fill a TRICON with bubbles.