One of the things people do not understand is the military.

It was and still to a point still is a meritocracy or at least tries to be one.

I had a battery commander, a captain that had enlisted as a private, gotten a Warrant as a helicopter pilot and later commissioned in the Artillery branch.

I had a First Sergeant that hadn't finished grammar school and  Platoon leader that had graduated from West Point. The commo officer had gone through ROTC and was paying back his military obligation. My platoon sergeant was a high school graduate.

The NCO that ran the Fire Direction Control section admitted to having had a third grade education but you would never know it. FDC was all about higher mathematics and he was a regular Einstein. He had started his career as a grunt but showed promise and got his education in the army.  

One of the guys in the squad I ran had graduated from college and was a Sp/4. He had been drafted and refused OCS because he could simply do two years as a draftee and get out. OCS was a four year commitment. He was actually a lazy soldier that ran around feeling sorry for himself.

Yesterday I spoke with a Vietnam vet that had entered as a private, enrolled in a Green to Gold type program and commissioned. He retired as a major over twenty. He had entered with a high school diploma. He also ran a rifle company in Vietnam.

The guy I met with this retired major was a former Navy submariner. He had joined the Navy with high school diploma under the nuclear engineering program and spent about a year in school learning about nuclear power plants. When his obligation was over he found an excellent job in a nuclear electric plant and retired from that. He said he was hired over a couple of college grads because he has several years of practical experience from being assigned to nuclear submarines. 

I had a doctor work on me several years ago that had been drafted. The army needed combat medics and he was smart enough so they sent him to Ft Sam for basic medic training. In Vietnam he shone and was offered a green to gold opportunity. He took it and kept climbing the ladder and became an orthopedic surgeon, retiring as a full colonel. He never lost the common touch and I really liked his style.

I know that I had no dreams of an army career but I did take advantage of a number of schools that were offered me. The first school was a management course that lasted for two weeks. Being my first shot at a school I busted my ass and became an Outstanding Graduate which pissed a lot of people off because I had been told to simply pass the course because they didn't want it known I was an acting sergeant but in reality a PFC. It was a sergeant level course.

I was ordered to report to the Battalion Commander but he was not in so I reported to the XO who was supposed to raise hell with me.

He looked at me with an evil smirk and called S-3 and told them to send me to a knife fighting/snake eating school. He also unknown to me had my Battery Commander promote me to Sp/4.

 I did well at the school. but almost got busted for whipping out a hidden dagger on the judo instructor when he used me to demonstrate s judo throw on.

On Day one they had told us we were supposed to be unpredictable and when I got hauled up before The Man I told him I was in compliance of my orders to be unpredictable. He turned red and told the angry judo instructor to be better prepared for the unexpected. 

Later on I put in for SERE school, survival, escape, resistance and evasion. I managed to escape the first day and that opened a can of worms because policy was that anyone that managed to escape from the Rangers running the school didn't have to go through the rest of it. I simply buried myself and waited them out for a very long day, wetting my pants in the process so as not to give myself away. Late that night, eighteen hours later I crawled out and made a break for it in the middle of the night. I've posted this story before. I returned to my unit and the Battery Commander got stuck in the middle of it all. The Battalion Commander didn't know what to do and the Battalion XO told me he was proud of me.

I later got sent to sniper school and did well there because I am by nature a sneaky bastard. I did well there, passing with flying colors. What is interesting is the school was all about woodcraft. We never fired a shot.

The management course was worth college credit which was nice. I got credit for it when I got out at the local community college.

The point of this is that the services are really quite a field of opportunity. While I took advantage of schools that I found as fun and interesting most of which had no value outside the service the fact remains that most of the deadbeats I was with would have rather hung around the barracks shining their shoes and doing as little as possible until their enlistments expired. These are the people that a lot of people think about when they think about military life. 

I had fun and learned a few things. 

The fact remains that there is opportunity in the service that is not available on the outside. It is one of the few places left that a person can enter with a GED and work his way up as far as his ambition and talent can take him.

A lot of people don't know, for example, that Al Gray who was the Commandant of the Marine Corps. He enlisted as a private.

The woods are full of people that served and either took advantage of the programs offered or didn't. One thing about any schooling of any type one got in the service is that it goes with the person for life.















To find out why the blog is pink just cut and paste this: http://piccoloshash.blogspot.com/2009/12/my-feminine-side-blog-stays-pink.html NO ANIMALS WERE HARMED IN THE WRITING OF TODAY'S ESSAY