You know, I wonder if that kind of thing isn't from a particular time period. The reason is that none of the military or ex-military people I've personally interacted with have acted like you describe but at the same time in some Vietnam War memoirs I've read about some military personnel who were extremely insecure and hostile leaders.

In one memoir, whose author's name I forgot but which was entitled "And A Hard Rain Fell", there was a drill sergant who was very cruel and sadistic. There was a fat man who had dropped out of law school and ended up being drafted and the drill was always harassing him. As I recall, when the fat man couldn't run with the rest of the group the drill took away all his clothes, threw a cigarette on the ground, and told the fat guy to extinguish the cigarette by pooping on it. When the fat guy finally squeezed out a tiny poop the drill made him carry the poop in his hands and run naked with the rest of the group.

Finally, the fat guy committed suicide and the drill presumably got in trouble because that was the last the author ever saw of him.

Thing is, I've never heard any stories like this recounted by anyone I know today with a military background. I wonder if this had something to do with the military functioning along a different theory (World War II paradigm; zerg rush with bodies and industrial power) than it does today. (Minimize casualties because they sap morale and make you lose the war, so focus on quality instead of zerg rush.)

Edit: Here you go, here's the book: http://www.amazon.com/Hard-Rain-Fell-Story...m/dp/157071987X

Edit 2: Aha, from the reviews, someone is mentioning the part I'm talking about.

Edit 3: Holy crap, read the reviews. People either love the book or they hate it. It's, like, an ideological divide.

huh, missed this post. kindvixen's descriptions are pretty accurate... sometimes. there are certainly a lot of lower enlisted who act like this. there are upper enlisted who act like this, too, but they don't tend to remain "upper" for very long--i saw a 20-year veteran retire at E-5; at the height of his career, he'd been an E-7 in an E-8 slot.

hell, if i didn't know better, i'd think kindvixen was talking about our III/V platoon--fuel/arms or arms/fuel, i never remember which; regardless, they were the guys who refueled and rearmed the Apaches. they did a good job, too, as long as they were on the job. to get them there, though, you had to find them, and hope they weren't too drunk. kindvixen might also have been talking about D troop, or A troop, or B troop, or C troop, or HHQ, or the supply detatchment we shared our base with, or the civilian contractors who worked with us...

everybody in Korea drank. if you weren't on duty, you were drinking--it was like an on/off switch. hopefully, once you were back on duty, you weren't still drunk, but shit happens. hell, one of the BOSS trips we took frequently was to the OB beer factory. at the end of the tour, they put you in a room with a bunch of kegs and cups until you were ready to leave. we took full advantage. you want to talk about stunts a ten year-old drunken monkey would think twice about? i had an LTC who got arrested for duck hunting. that doesn't sound like much, until you understand that private citizens in Korea--and this very, very much includes American personnel stationed there--are not allowed to own firearms, much less go around firing them. everybody thought it was hilarious--he got a plaque and everything.

one year, we got honored as the most-badass air attack squadron, or something like that. the only reason i remember the award is because that same year, we got 'honored' as the unit with the most disciplinary actions on the peninsula. we drank to celebrate both distinctions. i don't have the breadth of experience to say for sure, but i'm willing to bet that the units and locations with the most discipline problems are the units and locations with the most unpleasant jobs to do. fueling and arming a chopper while it's snowing sideways isn't, y'know, fun. nobody likes having a job that sucks, and 'playing hard' is the way most people tend to deal with having to do those jobs.

Ok, I'll go ahead and tell you:

The average off-duty private doesn't act like an ape, any more so than any other average 18-22 year old does.

Have you ever been in or around a college campus? Well, the average private is just like a college student, except with a bit more money (on average), and a bit more discpline. Funny thing, though, as much as alcohol is a problem in today's military, the actual number (percentage wise) of legal offenses (DUI's, drunk inpublic, etc...) is lower than for the equivalent age group of civvillians.

On the other hand, as eidolon said, military personnel do a whole hell of a lot of vounteer work, outside of normal working hours. The motivations are many: sometimes because they were voluntold, sometimes because they volunteer, sometimes to get ahead in their job, sometimes for entirely unfathomable reasons, but regardless, they do a huge amount of volunteer work.

As for what rank civillians are equivalent to, well, I hate to break it to you, but the average civillian isn't equivalent to any rank whatsoever. If they are in a specific job that gives them equivalent rank, then yes, they have those priveleges, and should be treated as such. The various GS (government service) positions have rank equivalents, and provide various priveledges as such. So, whatever job you were in, you may have had a rank equivalency of a private, or a sergeant, or an officer. Of course, it was your responsibility to find out what that was, and act accordingly.

Finally, the military nowadays encourages some individuality and ability to think for yourself. The decision a young corporal or private makes on the battlefield can have strategic, national implications, and trust me, we don't want automatons making those decisions. A lot of time and effort go into leadership and decision making training for that very reason.

Anyways, enough topic tangency. I just get somewhat offended when people seem to have some sort of axe to grind, and use that to paint the military as a whole with a pretty false brush.

Entirely and all the time?

~J

Heh, my friend had some fun stories about his time in Korea when he got back. He was a major (now a lt col) at the time and he had to pull duty to walk the bar district and make sure the enlisted didn't get into much trouble. Trying to quell the sitations, calling on the MP's, or worse case the Korean equivalents when it involved Korean citizenry.

I'd be surprised if the guy I got suspended didn't remember it a bit better. These guys worked with my dad too. And basically, while I have no rank in the yelling order, this does not mean they can yell at me as if I was a private.

Imagine if some captain would walk up to you on the street and start yelling his fucking lungs out. See how you'd take it. This was basically the same thing. I was hired to trim the damn rose bushes and to mow the lawns. I was not in the military, and thus technically, on the yelling order, I'm above almost anyone simply due to NOT. BEING. IN. IT.

Meaning, unless it's an emergency, they have no right *OR* reason to yell at me.

I asked my dear dad about the fate of that one officer, and apparently he got into a massive amount of trouble for yelling at and threatening a civilian.

I learned that what they say is true: Nobody can intimidate you without you allowing them to do so. Sadly I presumed that these people act like it to all people my age. While true, this doesn't make it any better. Ah well.

It's good to see that this experience didn't leave a chip on your shoulder.

Towel for your dripping sarcasm?

He may be being a bit sarcastic, but he has a point. You're taking that one incident with one officer, and using it as a brush with which to paint an entire military in broad strokes. That's just silly. Even if the situation is exactly what you say it was, and I'm sure that from your perspective it was, it's hardly indicative of anything other than one guy being a jerk.

That, combined with your slightly "nyah-nyah" attitude, doesn't really do a whole lot to stabilize your platform, really. No offense or anything, just telling you what it looks like from another viewpoint.

Marines call them Drill Instructor

my mistake, then. they remember it quite clearly as "the day that damn civvie flipped out for no reason at all and got CPT Whoever in trouble".

That's good to know. No character drama in the middle of the firefight. It's worth mentioning because I've seen that kind of thing to down in general in SR games, where one character is mad at another character for something and they start doing their in character drama while bullets are whizzing around.

I mean, in real life, that probably wouldn't be realistic anyway whether or not you have a military background, but it's worth mentioning because I've seen it happen sometimes in games.

Actually, and in all honesty, I'd probably think that it was the funniest thing in the world.

I've had worse things happen to me and they just didn't bother me that much. I've been mugged in New York City as a middle schooler and while it was somewhat traumatic at the time I think it pissed off my parents more than it pissed me off.

When I was a grad student in New Orleans I had two incidents where someone tried to intimidate me on the street, which in my mind is more serious than someone just coming and yelling at me. In both cases the person left after I wasn't intimidated. In one of the cases I actually started moving closer to the guy in order to assault him and he ran away. I was mildly angry at the time but overall I remember the episodes as being humorous episodes, especially since the people in question basically retreated once I failed to be an abject coward.

So, yeah...if some military-looking guy with big muscles and a crew cut (since I don't know enough about the military to make a more sophisticated identification) ran up to me on the street and randomly started yelling at me, I'd wonder if he was on crack or really drunk or something. I'd probably just ignore him and continue on my way and then tell my friends about the military nutcase who ran up to me and started screaming over beers or something.


EDIT: Actually, I do have one episode in my life where I was on a base and a military guy was a little bit mean to me, and my reaction *was* humor.

In order to have an easy time with the paperwork for my Peace Corps physical I went to Nellis Air Force Base in Las Vegas to get all my shots and my physical from the military hospital there since doing this would eliminate the need for me to do additional billing and reimbursement related paperwork. All the staff and military personnel were extremely kind and helpful except for one man; the guy at the gate. He had sergant's stripes (which I recognized from playing lots of America's Army) but he was guarding the gate, so a friend of mine who used to be an Air Force lieutenant later told me that he was probably being disciplined for something and hence was probably in a bad mood.

Anyway, something was out of order with my dad's vehicle registration and the sergant told us that he couldn't drive on the base. I shrugged and just walked across the base to the hospital.

The sergant wasn't rude or anything, and you could say he was just doing his job, although you could also argue that the vehicle registration issue was minor, but in the end it just wasn't that big of a deal. I walked for a while and did what I needed to do and then walked out.

My reaction was to later on tell this story to the aforementioned former Air Force lieutenant as a funny story. So, yeah...my reaction appears to be humor.

Well, right there you'd know he wasn't MI.

(Yeah yeah, some MI guys are hooah and work out...some. We call them hardcores, and not in a loving tone. )

Fragging/friendly fire. Drama probably doesn't start during firefights, but it's certainly ended during them.

~J

Speaking from experience....the only time there is any "Automatons" yelling at each other is in a specific training environment like Basic Training, Airborne Training, Ranger Training, BUDS, SERE, SWIC, or other schools where rank is more or less meaningless (officers and enlisted together, equal, in the same training class) and the goal of the school is disciplinary in nature. By that I mean, the purpose of the school is to instill discipline in the trainee with regard to specific military related skills. Take SERE school for instance. SERE = Survival Evade Resistance Escape. This training course is required for all military personnel who have high risk of being trapped behind enemy lines like special forces and pilots. Cadre, during the resistance and escape phases of the school test a students metle in many ways, all of them designed to over stress the student so they can disover their own breaking point. Yelling? Yep...you bet. Mental abuse? Sleep deprivation? Yep....you bet.

But what you describe is NOT the day to day culture in the military....at least not in the Army. Marines I'm sure are a little tougher, but in the Army, Combat Support and Service Support MOS's are basically a 9AM - 5PM job, with an extra 1.5 hours of PT thrown each day in the mornings from 6:30AM -8AM, unless your unit is deployed to the field for Field Training, a JRTC (Joint Readiness Training), or a combat deployment.

Day to Day for a Combat Arms job is similar, but their Field Training occurs alot more frequently and their situational exercises deal alot more with putting a round in a target and other supporting activities (MOUT Operations, Airborne Operations, Air Assault Operations, etc.)

When a soldier fucks up....and is on the carpet in front of the 1st Sergeant getting his ass chewed....yeah, there's the potential for yelling. When yer doing drill and ceremony on the parade grounds, yep...commands are "barked". However, yelling in the day to day course of business is unecessary unless its warranted for some reason.

Military training isn't brainwashing per se....though if a recruit is already extremely suseptable to suggestion, its possible for them REALLY loose their identity in their training. I never forgot who I was, where I came from, my likes, my dislikes, or my view of self. I became more disciplined.....self disciplined.....and realized that i really could do more than I thought I could in alot of areas.....endurance, both physical AND mental. I gained the ability to laugh in the face of adversity, put my needs or wants to the side and work within a group to accomplish something greater than what i could do on my own.

There is a social reconditioning that takes place when you are in that kind of envrionment for 4 years or more. There are customs and coutesies that must be adhered to. There are expectations for behavior. But I don't think these things take away from one's identity or character. In my opinion, they add to it.

Just my perspective.

Hey thanks man.

I appreciate it.

Hehe....I missed this post earlier.

Man....I've got alot of stories that begin that way.

I remember at Ft. Bragg, I was assigned to one of the aviation units and about 13 of us went out to celebrate after we received a "Commendable" rating on one of our ARMS (Aviation Resource Management) inspections. We went to this one club and one of my buddies started hitting on this one fairly hot chick who was already sortta up for grabs between these four Force Recon Marines that were there at Bragg TDY from Cherry Point for some joint excercise that was going on. Well, he was drunk, my buddy that is......we all were, and before you knew it a fight broke out between this Marine and my buddy. Another buddy of mine jumped in which gave the green light to that Marine's three buds to jump into too. Before you knew it, it was four Force Recon Marines against thirteen Army aviation guys with alot of other folks getting drawn in for good measure......and guess what.......

They whipped our asses. I jumped into the fray about 45 seconds into the fight...I hit one of the marines REAL hard only to have the guy smile at me, then I took two hits (one to the face, one to the gut) and before I knew it was thown into a corner. I decided to just sit back after that, nurse my bloody lip, and watch the rest of the fight unfold. It was a massacre. These four dudes had clearly been fighting together as a team for a while and they just mopped the floor with everyone. It was, quite literally, like watching a brawl in an action movie.

MP's finally got there, broke it all up and took three of my buddies, two of the marines in, and like five or six other patrons that had got drawn into the brawl. I think the bill was like $5700 in damage done to the place.

I'll never forget it. Fun stuff!