5 Things They Don't Tell You About Being In the U.S. Military

It's important to note, this article has two purposes: to make light of some things and allow me to vent. That's all. I'm sure it's shot through with political feelings that not everyone will agree with.

If that's the case, I encourage you to go to whatever website it is that only posts things you agree with 100%.

Also, this post contains the most offensive phrase I have ever heard. 

5. Nothing can prepare you .  . . for all the singing

Basic Training, Boot Camp, or whatever the branch you join calls it, has more singing in it than a Broadway musical. The first two to three weeks you barely go to the field. Mostly it's classes about the how's and why's and history of your branch. You get three meals a day and every time you march to the chow hall, you will be singing your fool head off.

It's the same five songs over and over and over again so it's like radio in the late nineties if they never got past Rag Time.

You know Do Wa Diddy? Thanks to the movie Stripes that's still a favorite. Some cadences have been sung since the 1940s. The song Candy Man by Christine Aguilera from 2007 samples a cadence.

You know when you hear a song from your adolescence and suddenly you're transported back to the summer of 1998, when cartoons were cool, comic books featured Maximum things, from Carnage to Clonage and life was pretty chill?

After basic training, every time you hear a cadence, you think it's time to march to someplace where there is food.

LEADER: I wanna lead a life of Danger.

ME: I wanna be an English Major"

LEADER: SHUTUP HIGGINS! 

4. We're really good in a crisis. . . and that's about it

Basic training colors every aspect of military thinking. This is an awesome and terrible thing.

It's awesome because now everyone thinks the same way and communication is ten times easier. It's terrible because the only way to get anything done is to portray it as though it's a life-and-death crisis.

Such attitudes make it impossible to prioritize and it makes people look absolutely bat-shit insane.

Think about it. If everyone is behaving as though everything is equally important, then nothing is important.

If making sure your squad has enough ammunition for patrol is treated with the same degree of rigor as whether or not today's PowerPoint has inoffensive clip art and a pleasing layout, and you're going to in the same amount of trouble if either one doesn't get done, how on earth do you decide what's important? Obviously, you'll arm your squad right, but then if that goddamned stick figure guy shows up again, you could be removed as squad leader. 

Conversely, if you are in charge and treat the power points you need for a presentation on Thursday the same way you think you would act during a firefight with Nazi Al Qaeda Robots, things will be shitty for everyone.

Acting like somebody's gonna bleed out unless a trooper TYPES THE SHIT OUT OF THAT SUPPLY REPORT will lead to someone seeing your behavior for what it is and throwing a monkey wrench into the works by just not producing that day.

This makes a deployment doubly ridiculous because you have this unholy combination of actual life-threatening situations like indirect fire, IEDs, convoys and helicopter rides an hour before a sandstorm coupled with the mundane stresses of paperwork and corporate meeting wank-fests.

YOU HAD BEST UNFUCK YOURSELF COCK AU VIN!

3. But you get used to it. . . until the deployment ends

This is not to say everyone's going to come back with PTSD, but after moving at a pace of 6 and 1/2 days a week for 12 hours a day, having a normal 8-hour work day or even a 10-hour work day can feel like not enough time to get anything done.

That's just the beginning though.

When you're deployed, water is free, food is free, housing is free.

When you get back, especially if you're a reservist, you have to devote at least part of your time to acquiring at least two if not all three of those things.

Nothing quite says "Welcome to this old life that's now alien to you" like going grocery shopping. Say what you will about The Hurt Locker being inaccurate, the scene at the end of the movie in the grocery store was spot on.

I was actually concerned about that happening to me as I was browsing in the local Ridiculous Monument to The Ease of Western Life and for a while I was doing okay.

And then, Duran Duran's Ordinary World started playing over the store sound system while  I was looking at vegetables.

I mean, c'mon!  Of all the songs that might make me feel like the adventure was over, and I was suddenly this grizzled old combat vet? The screenwriter of my life is totally fired.

Speaking of screenwriting, screenplays and such. . .

2. No military fiction will ever be entertaining again

Anyone who has been in an Explosive Ordnance Disposal unit will tell you that The Hurt Locker is a bunch of bullshit.

I've talked to a few professionals and the complaints vary from nobody that crazy would still be on active duty (sure) to no unit would see that much action during a rotation (way more likely).

Even as the argument made by me just above this paragraph that the movie is "emotionally true," it will never be up to snuff in a technical way.

In movies or TV shows, you will see sixteen things wrong with every actor portraying a soldier you see.

There was an episode of Lie to Me where they go to Fort George G. Meade, Md., where they supposedly mobilize troops to get ready for the combat zone.

Meade is not a mobilization station.

That's the first long series of "This is Wrongs" that I saw during that episode, Tim Roth's in-and-out American accent notwithstanding.

This is twice as true for Call of Duty. I used to love Call of Duty and now I can't stand it.

What I can't stand is the stark contrast between some of the most realistic graphics of any game and the astonishing behavior of the players. The last time I played online a 10-year-old said "Your fucking father sucks fa**ot ni**er cocks!!!"**

Think about that phrase. I do not imply it's repeating lightly, it is literally the most offensive thing I have ever heard in my life.

Military conversation can be a little rough, with "mother fucker" spoken where semi-colons would be printed, but The Phrase I'll Never Type Again was beyond any combination of words I could conceive of.

It was shouted at me because I and a bunch of military buddies won a fictional battle with actual teamwork and strategy rather than everyone running around spraying and praying.

See, the military teaches you to be precise and have some kind of plan, because one failed mission will make the news faster than three hundred successful ones.

This is important because, probably due to media portrayals like The Hurt Locker and Call of Duty, people have this idea in their heads that military deployments are like a million-round boxing match with a heavy metal soundtrack. So, naturally, they think all of our problem-solving skills involving shooting, hitting, or blowing things up, so. . . 

An UNMOUNTED MK14 topped off with the most OUT OF REGULATION HAIRCUT I HAVE EVER SEEN. The fact that Edward Norton turned into a giant green dude I'll buy, but there IS NO WAY you are going to tell me Brodsky wouldn't have been knife-handed all the way to the barber on post by the nearest sergeant major. 

1. People Think You Want to Fight about EVERYTHING when you really don't

The American People have this idea in their heads that if a person is willing to fight for something as abstract as Freedom © or something more concrete like "The Safety of the People of Iraq" they will also throw down over the most petty of bullshit.

It could be something as mundane as whether or not the Yankees suck.

Everyone has their opinion, and let's be honest it's quite common to hate the Yankees.

Equally common is an irrational belief that the Yankees are somehow not Major League Baseball's answer to the Empire from Star Wars.

I was pointing this out to a friend mine, half-jokingly in between us exchanging anecdotes about the wacky, wacky times we had, I in Iraq and she in Afghanistan.

A Random Yankees fan, likely lured by the heady cocktail of trash-talking George Steinbrenner and people talking about triple-digit weather and near-death experiences, just had to tell me I'm wrong and furthermore that the Orioles suck.

This is usually true, except that at the time the Yankees were 4-6  and the Baltimore Orioles were 8-2 making them second in their regional conference and head and shoulders above every other team in the American League.

I explained all of this to the Yankee Zombie calmly, even as I'm well aware this is how it is every year, the O's start strong and can't make the playoffs. This is why we love spring in Baltimore City and generally get bummed in July.* I fully expected him to just bring up this fact and then I said "touché" and we returned to our drinks.

He asked if I wanted to step outside.

All the joy drained from me.

I've never taken sports that seriously, and I certainly don't regard sports standings as a reason to fight. And I told this guy, these are my exact words "No, I don't. I'm not going to fight you. I'm a professional. I don't fight people over factual numbers, and I certainly don't need to fight you to prove the Yankees are the worst thing to happen to baseball since the handlebar mustache went out of style."

Everyone in the immediate vicinity thought the remark was hysterical, in part because it broke the tension, and the guy was completely deflated. I believe it was Sun Tzu who said "The supreme art of war is winning by making your enemy look like a box full of small dildoes."

I will not use my taxpayer-funded training to fight some jackass who likes SPORTS TEAM! 

*The O's have improved immensely and are not just a competitive team but they now make the playoffs on the regular and are a staple of the City of Baltimore and should stay there

**What happened after that, for the curious, I asked the young man to apologize and he let loose with a tirade that was even worse. Dear reader, in the next round I insisted on one goal: Fuck that kid's kill ratio. If you have a coordinated team you can kill someone about 300 times in a five-minute round.