I saw a video on Instagram the other day from a military-related page I follow, talking about the ‘recruiting crisis’ for the military, and honestly, even though I don’t have a horse in this race at all.. maybe I can give some insight for someone considering it. If you’ve read some of my previous writings, you might know by now that I’m not the biggest fan of the military. Not because of anything they did, but the way I left the military really fucking sucked.. sorry, it didn’t suck, it just felt like it sucked. Basically, I was reaching the end of my contract, but I was also able to be promoted. They decided that even though I had 2 years left on my contract, it wouldn’t be justified to promote me when I just intended to separate in 2 years. If you want to talk about that one.. go read it, but we’re going to skim over it here.

The most important thing to learn from that though, was that it was the people, not the military doing that. The military, as a whole, didn’t get together and decide it was time to fuck me over.. other soldiers with rank decided that was what they wanted to do. It’s not a standard operating procedure, but if you asked a handful of servicemembers, you’d probably think it was considering how many times I’ve heard about that kind of shit. I was even warned about telling them I didn’t want to re-enlist because they could potentially hold it against me.

And I thought, “no way would my leadership be that petty.”

They were.

So, on to this..

Again, if you’ve read some of the stuff I’ve written, do not base any sort of decision on that because you’re getting firsthand experience from an infantryman. Only 40% of soldiers in the military will be deployed, even less than that will have combat deployments. Infantry and frontline units make up about 15-20% of the military. Of those deployed, only about 10% of that 40% deployed, will actually fire their weapons.

In some ways, you probably have a better chance in being involved in a school/mall/public area shooting, than you do to be deployed and shot at on a combat deployment. And here’s the catch too- you have to actually volunteer to go into a frontline specialty.. unless the Draft comes back. There are so many less jobs on the frontline than there are everywhere else in these branches.. seriously. Imagine any military service like a corporate office, you have entry-level employees all the way up to the CEOs. You’re not being forced to apply for those entry-level jobs, you could apply for any level inside this office, and each job has its own duties and responsibilities. Only those entry-level employees would be the ‘combat jobs’ in this analogy. Which.. is essentially only the bottom floor of this office building. Every other floor has employees that do pretty much everything else to keep the building sustained.

Power, water filtration, administrative duties, payroll, engineering, mechanics, medical… you name it, there’s probably a job for it. But that isn’t really what gets advertised and seen, or at least, I don’t think it was very well advertised when I was going in. Instead, you see all the cool shit. Explosions, gunfire, movies like Saving Private Ryan and Black Hawk Down, all the things to help glorify the ‘war experience.’

They make it look cool because it’s the job that no one wants to actually do.. but if you make it look cool enough that people want to enter into that field, then you can deal with them being unhappy with it once they’re there. All they need to do is get you in the front door, and get your name on the dotted line. It doesn’t matter to your recruiter if you hate it once you’re at Basic Training, because then it’s no longer their problem.

That’s a lot of the bad stuff they don’t really mention going in, but- and I know this may come as a surprise to some people… I actually would recommend joining the military to most people.. just, not in the way most people probably look at it. Like for instance, I would probably only tell someone to join the Army if you specifically wanted to do something special related to that branch.. like Army Rangers, or Special Forces, or some shit like that. Either that, or put the Army near the very, very bottom of your list of branches to join. It’s not because it’s a bad branch entirely, but.. there are better options for pretty much the same jobs, just in branches with a high quality of life. And in the Army, and I’m pretty sure the Marines too, you are just a number. You might have a name, and you might be a person, but to that branch and most of your leadership above you- you are a number in a long list of numbers that will be replaced if needed.

I can’t find any reason for anyone to be a Marine- haha, that’s kind of a joke, but also.. Marines are probably the most proud branch we have. Their history speaks for themselves, and they’re known to be some badass mother fuckers.. also, they can tend to be some pretty dumbass mother fuckers too. No hate, I promise, but some of the dumbest people I’ve met in the military ate crayons with the Marines. Also, one of the most intelligent people I’ve ever met in my life was also a Marine.. so, take that part with a grain of salt. But the reason I say that there’s no real reason to pursue the Marines, is because there are plenty of other branches, again, that have higher quality of life than the Marines and Army.. and if you’re not signing up to go fight a war, then you’re basically signing up for a job with a uniform. Pick one that isn’t going to make you hate your life.

While I was in, and even now that I’m out, we still troll the Navy, Coast Guard, and Air Force. We tease the Navy about being gay because there’s a ton of dudes on a boat for long periods of time.. it comes with the territory. We tease the Air Force and call them the ‘chair force,’ because their jobs are relaxed, and they can put their hands in their pockets- and in reality we’re just jealous that their quality of life is significantly better than ours. I’m not joking- Air Force airmen were getting paid a stipend to live in the same barracks we did during our training rotations. They got paid extra to live in the places we were expected to sleep in normally.

It becomes a bit about pride, but honestly.. if you’re looking for a job, who really gives a fuck? You’re not trying to save the middle east or go to war, you’re looking for something you can survive in, and some place that will actually give you a job, and the military actually isn’t the worst option. However, unlike most careers, it is a commitment. You do have to sign a contract for a set amount of time, and if you choose to break that, there’s a good chance that you’ll have to pay back some of the benefits offered to you. Even if you don’t break that, the military’s Defense Finance and Accounting Services will probably still come after you for money you don’t owe them, and they will forever be a dark cloud over your future, not knowing whether they’ll be coming after you or not.. but honestly, is it really that much worse than taxes? ( no, but it becomes in addition to taxes )

I would encourage people to join the military, or at least put it with their options, because if you’re willing to give up 3 years of your life, they will pay for your schooling, you’ll get healthcare, and you’ll probably end up with more benefits than you would if you chose a more traditional path. Not to mention, without the need for therapy, or seeing combat, or anything like that, you’ll have a much easier transition to the civilian world, and you won’t have to worry about the sort of trauma that comes with that.

All in all, we’re at a point that was coming pretty obviously. A lot of people aren’t interested in joining the military, and the more access we have to social media to see what servicemembers have to say, can you really blame them? There’s fucking horror stories about time in service for some people, but more than anything, I just see depressed, fucked up veterans that wouldn’t wish that on anyone else.

Though.. I do feel the need to play Devil’s Advocate here too. Because if there should be a World War 3 coming, there will be a draft again. Because there are not enough people to fight that- the scale of that war will be massive, and even if the military branches are up to strength when it starts, they will not stay that way throughout. One thing that can’t be denied is that war will happen, and someone has to fight in it. If you don’t believe me, go look at Ukraine and Russia. Do you think Ukraine wanted to be involved in that, all the civilians that were just trying to live their own lives day to day? I promise, everything changes when gunshots start going off, and whether you’re at home in bed, safe and sound, or at the scene of those gunshots when they’re happening, everyone in this country is going to be involved, and impacted one way or another.

When it isn’t happening in your home country, you can turn off the news and pretend that everything is peachy keen. But when it becomes unavoidable, someone has to do something to fight back. My grandpa was drafted at the end of WWII, he did end up overseas and in Germany, but as a mechanic, not as an infantryman. Personally, I think every country should have mandatory military service- at least two years when you turn 18, and then you’re released from duty. Because the military allowed me to experience things that I would’ve never gotten to otherwise.

Your world is really only as big as you make it. I graduated high school in a town of about 6500 people.. it wasn’t a big town, and even after I graduated, I went to school in a neighboring city.. but my ‘world’ was still so small, and so was my view of it. Until I went to Georgia for Basic Training, and then I visited a friend I made there in Wisconsin, and after that, I got stationed in Italy, and visited multiple European countries for training and vacationing, and all kinds of fun stuff. Not to mention, then Afghanistan and Iraq, and.. well, now my world is much, much larger than a town of 6500 people. My world is open to everything that I’ve seen and experienced, and I would’ve never had that, had I never gone into the Army.

There’s positives and negatives with everything, and I can guarantee that this comes with both.. but I don’t want everyone to view the military the same way that I did- and that was with pretty much combat being their main job. It’s not.. combat is probably 5% or less of the jobs in the military, and unless you get drafted, you’ll probably never experience it anyway. If the shortage in military jobs was because no one wanted to have a combat MOS, I would totally understand. But when the rest of the military jobs are legitimately just regular jobs in a camo uniform.. it makes me feel like there’s either a misconception with how people view military careers, or maybe the military just sucks that fucking much with their retainability? Either way, I went in thinking it was going to be a lifelong career, and I got out 4 years later with more life experience than 95% of my peers.. also with more mental issues than them, but again.. combat-related issues from a job I chose to go into.

I guess if it’s something you’ve considered in the past, but you’ve never wanted to take that plunge.. it’s worth talking to a recruiter to know that you’re not going to be forced into combat. If you have other life goals that you’d prefer to meet before you die, you’re definitely not required to shoot/be shot at. Though you are required to know how to do that, which is good for self-defense anyway. 😉

I have quite a few different military stories posted.. the good, the bad, and the ugly of being in, and being deployed. Sometimes I’m willing to talk more about it, but overall.. it wasn’t the worst thing I’d ever done, and if I hadn’t chosen a combat specialty, I may have stayed in longer. My only recommendation to people that are considering it, is that you look at your options and all of their career choices, and then make sure that you pick a branch that coincides with that career choice. If you don’t want to be in combat, don’t choose a branch that goes to combat. Most of the Air Force, the Coast Guard, and most of the Navy jobs won’t be combative, and they won’t be as aggressive as the Army and Marines when it comes to training.

Hopefully that’ll help someone with that choice, every branch has it’s perks, but if you’re going for longevity of service, pick one that is the most livable for you. Not the one that seems ‘cool.’

And definitely don’t make the decision off their recruiting videos.. those are made to look cool, and I did pretty much nothing from any of the videos that were shown to me. 😂 I did some cooler shit, but I don’t think they would’ve been showing actual combat in their recruiting videos.

‘Til next time,

Cowboy