Hollywood stereotypes- and I could use some cheering up.

[csquared]

there were many ways to serve that didn’t involve being in the military.

Quoted for truth.

[Minflick]

My father spent World War II making vaccines for the military. Not just making them, but researching how to make them safer and more effective. He probably saved a helluva a lot of lives, but only got credit as a slacker, because he never served in the military.

Then there was my uncle, another slacker who was a merchant marine. All he did was skipper supply ships across the ocean hoping to avoid submarines, destroyers, and dive bombers.

I still get angry when people complain about WW II draft dodgers, without considering that there were many ways to serve that didn’t involve being in the military.

My mother always grumped that her father was conscientious objector during WWI, and he (just) drove an ambulance. I found out a little more how hard it could be to drive an ambulance on the front, and after my grandmother died, I found his Army discharge papers... Yes, he had PTSD, and could display a terrible temper, but he served, served well, and supported even if he never fired a gun. Not sure where mom's disdain came from, but it offended me after the fact, and says more about mom than grandpa.

[morgana]

My response, verbatim, would have been:

"I spent eight years at Strategic Air Command; civilian employee of the quarter twice. Mom made bombs in WWII. Dad drove submarines; Purple Heart. Second husband has the Air Force Commendation Medal. What have YOU got, wannabe?"

There goes the bitch-switch again . . .

[workerbee222]

Thank you for your service.

[AkaiKitsune]

My response, verbatim, would have been:

"I spent eight years at Strategic Air Command; civilian employee of the quarter twice. Mom made bombs in WWII. Dad drove submarines; Purple Heart. Second husband has the Air Force Commendation Medal. What have YOU got, wannabe?"

There goes the bitch-switch again . . .

My bitch switch is broken. It is usually stuck at ON though sometimes comes off when I try really really hard.

There are sooooo many jobs that aren’t on the front lines or combat oriented or where carrying a weapon is entirely unnecessary. As much as I may bitch about officers they do have a vital role in the military (even if a previous Lieutenant once proved there’s nothing more dangerous then an officer with a map). People may rag on the medical unit but who do you cry to when you get hit somewhere tactical armour doesn’t cover? Or have an unfortunate encounter with a baby gator?

While I never served on a submarine I have been in one once when my mother served briefly on one. How anyone manages to not go insane in such small quarters with other people is beyond me. I’m pretty sure I’d have snapped. (Also, sleeping bags and steep dives are a bad bad combination)

Without doctors (wether military affiliated or entirely civilian) where would we be getting our vaccines? I personally prefer not to get some weird ass disease myself. But someone has to research that stuff and then develop it.

Without supply what would a soldier fight with, or in? Where’s your uniform replacements coming from? Where would their rations come from? There’s a reason that breaking a supply route is the easiest way to defeating an army without confronting said army.

Without Comms who’s going to tell us if the guys with guns are people we need to be worried about or if they were the group we were supposed to be relieving/joining up with? Who would relay information between different groups of people?

If it weren’t for Intelligence we would all be sitting on our thumbs going wtf is happening and wth are we doing about it.

And everyone knows you don’t piss off the cook!

Yes, the airforce can be well... it’s the airforce. But how exactly were you planning to get to bumfuck nowhere? Walking? Sure... tell me how well that works, I’ll see you in a few weeks. That foreign country that you’re deployed in? On this side of the ocean you probably got there with the help of our good friend the Navy... or perhaps you have a set of gills and swam there. I suppose you could have come by commercial airline too but I bet you’d be picked up from the airport by whomever is in charge of transportation.

Your whatever mode of transportation/vehicle necessary to do your job breaks down? Who ya gonna call?

Even the civilian side helps out. I recall a lot of the volunteers at the Vets centre are civilian. The doctors and nurse who help ease your pain as you get older and have retired? Those are civvies most likely.

For all that Hollywood likes to portray all active service members as buff muscled baddasses (plenty of them are depending on what they do, to be fair) because it looks better when they take their shirt off. (And yes there are plenty of people who I served with that I would certainly ogle if I had half a chance). They don’t all have a six-pack of muscles or arms like a tree trunk. Some of them are skinny enough you wonder if they’ve hit their growth spurt let and other are round enough to make you wonder if they even do PT.

I did love the ships though. If I had a better tolerance for cold I would have gone Navy in a heartbeat. The coffin beds entertain me, I always chose the top and nailed some webbing I found to the bottom part and had it clipped to the top so I wouldn’t go flying in bad weather. My mom was Navy in a time where they weren’t so anal about keeping the civvies off if they were small kids that could be easily distracted with a piece of paper and a pencil. She worked with the Radar or something, I never quite knew what it was or what her tools were called or what she was even doing and she refuses to talk about anything military after they screwed her out of her full pension. One of the clearest memories I have is drawing a detailed picture of the ship we were on at the time (The Algonquin if I remember) that I found in some magazine that had been laying around. I remember that I was determined (in my small human mind) that I was going to give it to “my mum’s boss” (which just proves how little I was that I didn’t even have the vocab or knowledge to know who that even was).

I remember in elementary having to write about “a memorable experience” and stand up in front of the class and talk/answer questions. I talked about sailing through a hurricane and I remember because I went home crying after being given a zero for lying. My mother brought some of her friends in full dress uniform an informed the teacher that yes, her daughter had in fact sailed through a hurricane and if she would kindly apologize to her and her daughter for accusing her daughter of lying. I remember thinking that was the most badass thing I had ever seen. I believe the expression ‘shitting bricks’ was an apt description of the teachers face at the time and one I still recall fondly.

Yeah, take your kids to work tended to having interesting results when you’re mum’s Navy, your grandfather was a naval engineer, your grandma worked in intelligence, and your other grandparents worked supply and recon respectively. Nothing beats someone in supply whose caught up (mostly) and bored out of their mind.

That being said, since nobody in my family marries from the same country that they’re born in it means family get together have to be spread out and each branch carefully managed so that the wrong people don’t ever end up in the same city. My family tends to hold grudges... let’s just say the when some idiot decided get togetherness should be arranged by geographical location... well when you have British airborne in the same room as a Scot in the Army and And an Irish Naval officer, bad things happen. Or the time where the Greek side army and the Italian army, plus Germany who wrote down the wrong date and the self-inviting Baba Yaga all in the same 1000 square feet, who still haven’t gotten over things from years and years and years and years ago. Also, never invite a Russian to a snowball fight. Creativity witnessed, stunned disbelief had. Hell, the Spanish and the Italian sides of my family are still arguing over the whole Borgia/Medici thing from the 16th century and the French are still pissed at the British side because the brits were allied with Spain at some point to push napoleons army out of Spain. Country pride runs deep in my family and by extension their pride in their own military branches and then specific careers. It’s really about making sure that the worst grudges held don’t all end up in the same city at the same time rather then avoiding arguments all together. That being said, my deranged disfunctional family does get along quite well usually. Except when the dog incident is brought up.

[Blue Ginger]

People may rag on the medical unit but who do you cry to when you get hit somewhere tactical armour doesn’t cover? Or have an unfortunate encounter with a baby gator?

You can't leave us hanging. What happened to the poor baby gator?

I remember in elementary having to write about “a memorable experience” and stand up in front of the class and talk/answer questions. I talked about sailing through a hurricane and I remember because I went home crying after being given a zero for lying. My mother brought some of her friends in full dress uniform an informed the teacher that yes, her daughter had in fact sailed through a hurricane and if she would kindly apologize to her and her daughter for accusing her daughter of lying. I remember thinking that was the most badass thing I had ever seen. I believe the expression ‘shitting bricks’ was an apt description of the teachers face at the time and one I still recall fondly.

Your mum rocks. And your teacher was an ass, an even bigger ass if she already knew that you mum was in the navy. I'm betting your cool factor went up a few places with your classmates too.

My family tends to hold grudges... let’s just say the when some idiot decided get togetherness should be arranged by geographical location... well when you have British airborne in the same room as a Scot in the Army and And an Irish Naval officer, bad things happen.

Please tell me there was swearing? Lot's of swearing with accents? But hopefully no one spilt any booze. Or tea.

Except when the dog incident is brought up.

You can't leave us hanging about this one either.

[AkaiKitsune]

You can't leave us hanging. What happened to the poor baby gator?

We were set to do training with the Americans of some description that I can’t actually remember as we were next to useless at the time (couldn’t look at each other without laughing like school girls and we were eventually told to go back home after it wa a clear we just were incapable of handling ourselves with professionalism. This was back before we were entirely done our training. The opportunity came up and someone said “that’s a great idea”). We were to be in the swampy swamp part of Louisiana, not the fun parts. Anyway, this poor bastard decided he needed to take a dump right the fuck now and wandered off a bit to do the deed. All we here a few minutes later is screaming. The whole lot of us Canadians and some very confused Americans go running off to see wtf made that noise.

The scene we came upon was a poor wounded soldier with his pants around his ankles clutching his bum and screaming. The culprit? A little gator maybe, maybe, a bit bigger then a foot.

Since then, he was called Gatorbait and never ever lived it down. It was brought up when he became an officer, it was brought up when he got married. If we had our cells at the time someone probably would have posted a video on YouTube.

You can't leave us hanging about this one either.

Yes, the dog incident.

Basic story was innocent enough. German married an Italian and they decided to get a dog to celebrate a year of marriage. They had a happy marriage for some really long years and they got a new dog every time the old one started to reach the end of its life.

That happy marriage lasted until someone was caught in bed, Blitzing Britain so to speak. Course wifey decided to leave with the dog.

Well, as it turns out he cared a bit more for his marriage then having a mistress would imply. He decided he would man up and apologize, then woo her back and they’d wander off into the sunset to bone or something I suppose. If he couldn’t do that then he was determined to get the dog back a thing least.

She took a flight to visit some relatives and he followed her. She ran away to France where her sister had taken up with a Frenchman. (Who later turned out to be gay and didn’t realize that they were apparently in a relationship at all). He followed her there and convinced her to at least return to Germany. But she decided to divorce and live separately.

So he brought his sibling to help steal the dog back, since wifey was still clearly pissed.

What followed was basically WW3 without the killing and the death. Everyone took a side and they all tried to steal the dog back either for the wife or for the husband (or occasionally just for ransom. Never have it be said that my family can turn any situation into a profitable one). This involved 3/4 of the family tree and some very obscure round about ways of achieving this. It eventually ended when one of the great grandkids got great grandma very very very drunk and sign papers that basically amounted to a bill of sale.

The dog ended up in Canada somehow through a sibling’s uncles cousin whatever the hell indirect relation. Both husband and wife were told that the dog had died of old age while being transported between the warring ex-couple. And the dog lived happily ever after, free of wondering when the next kidnap attempt would take place. The husband and wife each got their own damn dog and stopped arguing over custody. (And instead argues over whose was better).

[Rosco the Iroc]

Even the civilian side helps out.

I surprised some Boy Scouts that were expecting the usual Vet day speech when I reminded them that one of the biggest reason I could go do what I did and did what I did -was there were equally good people who didn't go and took care of the home front and it's their work and lives that give me the reason to serve and defend it.

It's the civilization that really matters.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

Why do wannabes always focus on how-many-d'ya-kill-tho'? There's hundreds of thousands of jobs in the military where folk will never see the front line, but they're just as important to the smooth running of the unit. Not everyone signs up just to carve notches... And many who do so for that specific reason often find out that it's not what they were expecting!

Fucking armchair warriors and their "I learned everything I need to know about warfare from the TV" mentality.

One of the guys on my shift is former Navy and was on the "smash and crash" team for his ship. He can tell you stories. He never saw actual combat or the need to "smash and crash" anything, thankfully.

[morgana]

*sets up a shrine to AkaiKitsune in the corner*

[Dave in MD]

Just a little confused

While I never served on a submarine I have been in one once when my mother served briefly on one. How anyone manages to not go insane in such small quarters with other people is beyond me. I’m pretty sure I’d have snapped. (Also, sleeping bags and steep dives are a bad bad combination)

I did love the ships though. If I had a better tolerance for cold I would have gone Navy in a heartbeat. The coffin beds entertain me, I always chose the top and nailed some webbing I found to the bottom part and had it clipped to the top so I wouldn’t go flying in bad weather. My mom was Navy in a time where they weren’t so anal about keeping the civvies off if they were small kids that could be easily distracted with a piece of paper and a pencil. She worked with the Radar or something, I never quite knew what it was or what her tools were called or what she was even doing and she refuses to talk about anything military after they screwed her out of her full pension. One of the clearest memories I have is drawing a detailed picture of the ship we were on at the time (The Algonquin if I remember) that I found in some magazine that had been laying around. I remember that I was determined (in my small human mind) that I was going to give it to “my mum’s boss” (which just proves how little I was that I didn’t even have the vocab or knowledge to know who that even was).

I remember in elementary having to write about “a memorable experience” and stand up in front of the class and talk/answer questions. I talked about sailing through a hurricane and I remember because I went home crying after being given a zero for lying. My mother brought some of her friends in full dress uniform an informed the teacher that yes, her daughter had in fact sailed through a hurricane and if she would kindly apologize to her and her daughter for accusing her daughter of lying. I remember thinking that was the most badass thing I had ever seen. I believe the expression ‘shitting bricks’ was an apt description of the teachers face at the time and one I still recall fondly.

Let me start by saying that I served for 20 years in the US Navy on a variety of ship types.
Now what makes me confused is some of the statements you made. You said you mother served on a sub, women weren’t allowed to serve on subs till 2010 and you said you were a child when she was in so how old are you? And if she worked with radar, she wouldn’t have had a billet on a sub.{EDIT} If you are talking about the Canadian Navy, women were allowed on subs starting in 2000. But I still stand by the rest of my statements.
You say you always chose a top rack and nailed some webbing to the bottom and clipped it to the top. First off, the racks are made of metal and you aren’t nailing anything to it. And the “sissy straps” are already installed so there is not need for what you described. Not to mention the fact that you as a small kid would not be in the berthing compartment at all. Much less down there doing some kind of construction work. She would not have you at work playing with a paper and pencil in the corner anyway.
And as for your story about sailing through a hurricane. The only time civilians are aboard a ship underway is during a dependent cruise which is just a few hours in and out or a “tiger” cruise which can be a couple of days. Neither of which is going to be anywhere near a hurricane. Navy ships avoid hurricanes as a rule.
Long story short I have to call BS on your story.
Feel free to tell me why I am wrong.

[Blue Ginger]

Gatorbait. That poor guy. And I bet that story made it into the 'dangers of going off alone' story for all the newbies in boot camp.


That poor dog. I'm glad someone 'kidnapped' it in a good way and got it away from the crazy.

[Ironclad Alibi]

Let me start by saying that I served for 20 years in the US Navy on a variety of ship types.
Now what makes me confused is some of the statements you made. You said you mother served on a sub, women weren’t allowed to serve on subs till 2010 and you said you were a child when she was in so how old are you? And if she worked with radar, she wouldn’t have had a billet on a sub.{EDIT} If you are talking about the Canadian Navy, women were allowed on subs starting in 2000. But I still stand by the rest of my statements.

-clip-

There are many ways women can serve/work on a sub when it is port, which is what I suspect is the case here. I can't imagine any submarine allowing children onboard when it is at sea on a normal patrol.

Also considering all the countries her family is from, it could been any navy that has or had submarines, not just US or Canadian.

[AccountingDrone]

.

The scene we came upon was a poor wounded soldier with his pants around his ankles clutching his bum and screaming. The culprit? A little gator maybe, maybe, a bit bigger then a foot.

Since then, he was called Gatorbait and never ever lived it down. It was brought up when he became an officer, it was brought up when he got married. If we had our cells at the time someone probably would have posted a video on YouTube.
.

And if they were german they probably would have started in singing the schnappi song =)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjdAM7OKdqA

[marlovino]

*sets up a shrine to AkaiKitsune in the corner*

And a bunker for when the relatives show up.