Yes, all of this is free
The LA Times reports that the Army came out yesterday and admitted that the wonderful life that we all led in the Army is free. That’s right, all of that living in the woods, eating crappy chow, jumping from airplanes, sliding down a muddy slope on a rope…you earned that adventure;
You cannot buy your way into the U.S. military, Army officials reminded the public Monday, trying to clear up confusion in the Chinese American community after an El Monte man was arrested last week in connection with charging immigrants to join what authorities said was a phony military force.
“Everything we do is free of charge; that’s part of our duty, giving back to the community,” said Manuel A. Perales, sergeant first class at the Army recruiting station in El Monte.
Remember that next time you’re eating an MRE in neck-deep alligator-infested swamp water. Apparently there are people willing to pay for that experience and the Army has to have a press conference to announce that it doesn’t cost us a thing to live that life.
Category: Military issues
Idiots.
You don’t even want to know how many times we joked about rich folks paying good money to do what we were getting paid to do. You know stuff like fighting off hypothermia in the mountains of Wildflecken, Germany or heat stroke in the NTC and of course who can forget all the times we walked many a mile in full battle rattle just to get a chance at a cold MRE. Ah yes the good ‘ol days and it was all free. Look you haven’t really experienced life unless you have had your eyes freeze shut while riding in the hatch of a M113.
Don’t forget the fun and adventure of sitting in the hellhole of a UH-60 with the doors open on a nighttime mission in the scenic, desert environment of Iraq where it was so cold that your snot freezes to your face and then slaps the guy sitting next to you.
You mean someone was willing to PAY to clean out an oily shit-filled bilge, stand watches, do ORSE workups, and reactor plant maintenance in a 110-degree engine room (no showers–evap is down), then eat previously frozen bologna without bread because the fucking cooks didn’t do a full loadout of flour?
And then listen to the fucking Chief tell me to, “Reenlist for the bennies!”
Not that this has anything to do with Jonn’s post, but I actually kinda like the pound cake in MRE’s. The spaghetti isn’t too bad either, as long as you don’t let the heater burn one side while the other is as cold as a well digger’s ass.
Remember the old commercial, “We do more before 9 o’clock, than most people do all day!”? Of course in typical GI humor we morphed that into, “We f’up more before 9 o’clock, than most people F’up all day!”. Thanks goodness all that was free. Except for the field rats. If you were on separate rations they pulled that for the duration. So that wasn’t really free. And the uniform changes, you had to pay for those, so that wasn’t free either.
I think that is something that we take for granted. That I am sure that there are still places that you still have to provide your own gear like it was in the Roman Empire/Republic was before the reforms. Or if you want a higher rank that you did not have to buy it. Think of the British when you could buy a commission. Yes this is using older examples but I would be willing to bet that this still is going on now.
Yes you
maywill pay for it in other non monetary ways(Blood,Sweat and Tears) but in the sense of having the opportunity to try is indeed free. I think that is the point. I mean think of your average day and what we see as expected is considered a luxury elsewhere.Just a thought to throw out there.
Sporkmaster: You’re so right. When I joined in 1976, the Army was taking just about anyone. 3 hots and a cot was a good selling point to many of the people I ran into in Basic. They walked in there with the clothes on their backs and nothing else. They could could go as far as their motivation would take them.
1-2-3-4, this is what you asked for.
It’s corollary is: “Nothing is too good for our soldiers!
And nothing is what they’ll get.”
All joking and bad phraseology aside, I think the point is that you don’t have to pay to join the military and anyone who would “charge” poor unsuspecting immigrants who want to serve their new country for the privilege should be summarily shot.
As a matter of fact, Susan, I think it actually relates to a post I read on an obscure blog last week:
http://valorguardians.com/blog/?p=22939
😉
I hit 8 years next week. I was just thinking this morning about how nervous I was signing up, sure that MEPS would reject me, and how grateful I was to get to the point where I got to raise my right hand…
The gratitude waned a bit from time to time (Basic, Afghanistan, any Class A inspection), but it always comes back when I have a chance to think about it.