To be a military type

[Rag-Doll 0]

Well said Spud. It's a pity we didn't run into each other during our time in Tokyo.

 

You've obviously retained a lot of more of the training than I did! All I seem to remember these days is the really fun stuff and that quite early on I realized that I had made a mistake by joining the army and had to work for years to make the most of a bad situation.

 

One thing from my training that was driven so deep into my subconscious that it still catches me out occasionally is an obsession with closed zips and latches on bags and packs and the need to have your gear organized. If I’m in the BC or hiking and I’m trying to find something in the bottom of the my pack, I’m often jolted by the wrongness of having all of my gear unpacked and sitting on the snow/ground. Sometimes I can almost hear the psychotic Vietnam vets we had for instructors freaking out about it.

[damian 0]

Ha! I’m the same. So too is Ocean, if I recall correctly a story of his about having all of ones required riding gadgets in the right pockets.

 

By the way O11, the push-ups would be for your own benefit. Cleaning your teeth with a mossy twig is bad for your health and bad for your moral. It is the Lt’s job to ensure that both these valuable attributes of the individual solider and the team as a whole are optimised. Typical for a soldier not to know what is good for him.

 

ps RD - good signature line! Now where did that come from…

[BagOfCrisps 24]

Well my original post got a lot of response there. Cheers folks. Very interesting as well indeed.

[Ocean11 0]

My cousin Roger was also an Army chap - still is as far as I know. He was dyed in the wool army from birth.

 

He was always a bit of a weed really, with very skinny arms and golden curls. We used to call him Girly-boy when he was on a whine, and Tarzan when he was playing 'assault course' in his back garden.

 

He loved uniforms and joined the Scouts at the earliest opportunity. After that I don't recall ever seeing him out of Scout uniform. He seemed to think the Scouts was the army. His brother Martin once made a very funny video called "Broom Closet SAS" in which he burst from the closet with a balaclava on and waved the vacuum cleaner about. Roger took a lot of stick, but it never fazed him.

 

Rodge was off to Sandhurst at the first hint of pubic hair, for induction or some such ritual, and next time I saw him was at his wedding (he married a girl who looked just like my Auntie Margaret. Odd that, I thought.) He married in Uniform of course, and cut his wedding cake with his sabre. His golden curls were gone, to be replaced by a very strained-looking moustache. I believe he was Cpt. Tarzan by that time, and he had all his Cpt. friends with him who stayed in a tight bunch throughout the festivities and chortled in loud, theatrical bursts as officers do.

 

I heard that he was in the Balkans at one point and I'm sure the Balks were very grateful to have Cpt. Rodge looking after them. He may have been a little hard to talk to, but he had developed a very straight back and an aura of command, which no doubt would have made them feel secure.

 

Rodge's family are very middle class just as mine is, but Rodge began to speak with a distinct plum in his mouth when he became an h'offissah so that at his wedding, I got the impression that he was an embarrassment to his family and they to him. It was like they and their relatives had all crashed a wedding of the upper classes.

[soubriquet 0]

 Quote:

Originally posted by BagOfCrisps:
Last night a few of us were having a few pints and talking about a few things and got on the subject of being a soldier/military dude. None of us really could imagine wanting to do that and wondering what peoples thoughts are when they enter that profession?

Do we have any military type on here?

When I was 16 it offered a way to leave home, the chance to learn a trade, and adventure. Six months of bastardisation taught me I'm not the military type.

My niece's husband is hispanic from somewhere near LA. The USAAF trained him to service electronics on F18s. They are now paying for him to study for a computer science degree. He's no military type either, nor does he love the US. He's a top bloke though, and the military have given him the ladder he's using to climb from poverty.

[damian 0]

 Quote:

Originally posted by BagOfCrisps:
Well my original post got a lot of response there. Cheers folks. Very interesting as well indeed.

have you ever thought of actually contributing.... anything.

[BagOfCrisps 24]

I don't know anything about it. It seems a completely different world to what I'm in. That's why I was asking.

 

Cheers.

[damian 0]

On a flight last weekend I met a retired US Air Force guy. He had spent 13 years serving as a communications specialist attached to NATO near very nice Verona in Italy. He skied all the time and generally had a happy life. He was only 45 or so and was comfortably set up in life. He admitted that his version of military life was better than others.

[Curt 1]

Being a spy kinda dude looks fun in the movies.

 

 

I could never see the appeal of that kind of career although a few of my friends joined. (One now no longer with us actually, died in Iraq). Some dudes live for it all though don't they. If they enjoy it.....