(Untitled)

[errantoftherose]

I am back from summer training and am alive. I got a promotion to Corporal. So it is Corporal Rose now. I also have plebes to watch over and mentor. I hope to provide them with some good leadership; there are too many bad examples out there

Comments

[beefofages]

Those pictures are awesome. I've been riding in tanks and APCs as well, but they're imaginary ones in my computer.

[daskling]

congrats, corporal rose! sir!

congraduations for your promotion!

[worldismarble]

Corporal Rose!! I'm so glad you came back in one piece and i'm so glad i'm not going to west point and I'm very happy that you're happy and here comes a great big smile!

[great big smile!]

Re: congraduations for your promotion!

[errantoftherose]

haha Thanks

[greater and bigger lip ripping, eye squinting smile]

[noldolante]

Well, this probably isn't the sort of thing you want to hear, but I look at those pictures and I say to myself "Oh my God, they're children!"

I wonder what would happen if the only people we allowed into the army were men over 60 and women who had living children. 'Cause I think the "whee, toys" response has mostly died away by then.

Once when I was talking with my father about his own experience in the military, he said: "you know, they encourage - but not directly - you to think of everything as a kind of game. They present themselves as being totally separate from the world outside of the army, as though the decisions that you have to make couldn't possibly be understood by somebody who hadn't your training, and after the initial grueling period you're one of them..."

Anyway, just thinking on paper, I guess. Nice hat, by the way. =P

[errantoftherose]

Too bad the average sixty year old can't carry a 100 pound ruck over hills for miles and miles. Young men die for the follies of the old

[noldolante]

Ah, but the heart of any indoctrination is the cry "nobody else will understand you." Or accept you, or whatever the particular circumstance of the group happens to make appealing. While I appreciate this sort of thing as a matter of survival (look at how many cultures tell themselves "we are the chosen people"), and similarily can understand perfectly well how it happens de facto amdist harsh circumstances, what the militaries do is strictly controlled. Not to mention which, the end product is a large group of young men who feel exclusive from the civilian population, who are loyal chiefly to the military and to each other (if the training worked correctly), but who are ultimately at the beck and call of the very civilians whose judgement they're trained to distrust.

Doesn't that seem odd?

[errantoftherose]

Well of course we have to have a civilian chain of command in a democracy or else it wouldn't be much of a democracy and the military does get angry when the civilians take too much control (i.e. Vietnam and General Shinseki fighting with Rumsfield).

That feeling of togetherness is necessary for the military. Ever since the time of hoplites fighting for their polis it has been used to motivate soldiers to discpline and courage (The Spartans epitomized that mentality). And Alexander the Great found how successful dividing his army into competing units could further add to that team mentality. You will push harder when you know that your brother next to you is enduring the exact same hardships you are. But talking to most veterans, it is hard for them to explain what war is like unless you have been there, and it is hard for me to truly explain what the army is like to those who haven't been in it (and I am not even in the REAL army yet). I think that the "nobody else will understand you" applies to the army if it can to anything.

[prstinechrstine]

congratulations corporal britboy! =)