Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Wanna Enlist? - Fred Reed

Source

A Grand Adventure

Except That It Isn't



September 18, 2005

A friend recently asked me what I would tell a young man thinking about enlisting in the military. (He had in mind his son.) I would tell him this, which I wish someone had told me:

Kid, you are being suckered. You are being used. You need to think carefully before signing that enlistment contract.

First, notice that the men who want to send you to die were draft-dodgers. President Bush was of military age during Vietnam, but he sat out the war in the Air National Guard. The Guard was then a common way of avoiding combat. Bush could do it because he was a rich kid who went to Yale, and his family had connections.

He dodged, but he wants you to go.

Vice President Cheney, also of military age during Vietnam, also didn�t go. Why? When asked by the press, he said, �I had other priorities.� In other words, he was too important to risk his precious self overseas.

He dodged, but he wants you to go.

If you take the time to investigate, you will always find this pattern. The rich and influential avoid combat. Harvard, Yale, and Princeton do not send young men to Iraq. The editors at magazines that support the war, National Review for example, didn�t fight. They are happy to let you go, though. The reason for the All Volunteer military was to let the smart and rich avoid service and instead send kids from middle-class and blue-collar families. It works.

In talking to recruiters, you need to understand what you are up against. You are probably nineteen or twenty years old, full of pi** and vinegar as we used to say, just starting to know the world. Which means that you don�t yet know it. (Do you know, for example, what countries border Iraq?)

You are up against a government that hires high-powered ad agencies and psychologists to figure out how to lure you into the military. Over many years they have done surveys and studies on the weaknesses of young males to find out what will get them to join. They know that young men, the ones that are worth anything anyway, want to prove themselves, want adventure, want to show what they can do. Everything a recruiter does is carefully calculated to play on this. They go to recruiting school to learn how.

�The Few. The Proud.� You don�t think that came out of the Marine Corps, do you? These phrases��An Army of One,� �Be All You Can Be"--come from ad agencies in New York. Nobody in those ad agencies, I promise you, was ever in the Marine Corps. New York sells the military the way it sells soap. It has no interest in you at all.

Recruiters know exactly what they are doing. They are manly, which appeals to gutsy young guys who don�t want to be mall rats. They are confident. They have a physical fitness, a clean-cut appearance that looks good compared to all those wussy lawyers in business suits. They invite you to come into a man�s world. They promise you college funds. (Check and see how many actually ever get those funds. Read the small print.)

And of course the military is a man�s world, and it is an adventure, and it does beat being a mall rat�until they put you in combat. Driving a tank beats stocking parts in the local NAPA outlet�until they put you in combat. Days on the rifle range, running the bars of San Diego far from home and parents, going across the border into Mexico�all of this appeals powerfully to a young man. It did to me. It beats hell out of getting some silly associate degree in biz-admin at the community college.

Until they put you in combat. Then it�s too late. You can�t change your mind. They send you to jail for a long time if you do.

Combat is not the adventure you think it is. Know what happens when an RPG hits a tank? Nothing good. The cherry juice�hydraulic fluid that turns the turret�can vaporize and then blow. I saw the results in the Naval Support Activity hospital in Danang in 1967. A tank has a crew of four. Two burned to death, screaming as they tried to get out. The other two were scalded pink, under a plastic sheet that was always foggy with serum evaporating from burns where the skin had sloughed off. They probably lived. Know what burn scars look like?

The recruiters won�t tell you this. They know, but they won�t tell you. Ever seen a guy who just took a round through the face? He�s a bloody mess with his eyes gone, nasty hole where his nose was, funny white cartilage things sticking out of dripping meat. Suppose he�ll ever have another girlfriend? Not freaking likely. He�ll spend the next fifty years as a horror in some forsaken VA hospital.

But the recruiters won�t tell you this. They want you to think that it�s an adventure.

Other things happen that, depending on your head, may or may not bother you. Iraq means combat in cities. Ordinary people live there. You pop a grenade through a window, or hit a building with a burst from the Chain gun, or maybe put a tank round through it. Then you find the little girl with her bowels hanging out, not quite dead yet, with her mother screaming over what�s left. You�d be surprised how much blood a small kid has.

You get to live with that picture for the rest of your life. And you will live with it. The recruiter will tell you that it doesn�t happen, that it�s the exception, that I�m a commy journalist. Believe him if you want. Believe him now, while you can. When you get back, you�ll believe me.

A lot of things in America aren�t what they used to be. The military is one of them. The army didn�t always use girl soldiers to torture prisoners. For that they had specialists in the intelligence agencies. You won�t get assigned torture duty, almost certainly, because the Army got caught. Ask your recruiter about it, just to be sure.

Don�t expect thanks from a grateful nation. Somebody might buy you a drink in a bar. That�s about all you get. Many will regard you as a criminal or a fool.

Wars seem important at the time, but they usually aren�t. Five years later, they are history. About sixty thousand GIs died in Vietnam. We lost. Nothing happened. It was a stupid war for nothing. Today the guys who lost faces and legs and internal organs back then are just freaks. Nobody gives a damn about them, and nobody will give a damn about you. A war is a politician�s toy, but your wheelchair is forever. If you want adventure, try the fishing fleet in Alaska.

Think about it.

Fred is a little off there.....

1st of all no one who joins the military today does it ignorant of the chances for combat.

2nd - yep military life can be and often is a very real adventure - much better than the best hollywood has ever produced.

3rd - everyone I know of who was honorably discharged and signed up for the GI bill got their money. Numerous people were in school while serving - I know because they were my subordinates. I also know the VERY FIRST THING my CMC did when I got to my duty station was impress on me how easy it was to attend school while I was there. I had 2 people in my shop who were pursuing masters degrees. Enlisted people.




So f-ing ignorant it disgusts me.



BS - I didn't get to go to Iraq but I was showered with so much gratitude from Americans it bothered me to wear my uniform in public -- I am thinking Fred is talking more about his feelings than America as a whole here.....



More BS because I know of VA hospitals and VFW's filled with guys who are NOT freaks and are filled with people thankfull for what these people did.

Yep for a guy whose right to work as a journalist and say what he wants has been protected by that very same military for 230 years.

Tell Fred to suck my...... <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/mad.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/mad.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/mad.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/mad.gif" alt="" />

I've often said of my military service: I wouldn't do it again, but wouldn't take a million $ for the experience.

I can't say I enjoyed all, or even most of it. But it's a large part of who I am today. And if I weren't too old and worn out, I'd go in a heartbeat.
7mm

I can paraphrase almost all my job opportunities so far in life to be very similar.
I'm still much more afraid of death via getting in my transportation each day.
Its all volunteer.
The gene pool also needs to be cleansed at times.
I have no sympathy for any whining from cops, firefighters, or military... They chose the job. No one drafted them.
Lets see too now, we bastardize Bush because he was in a branch of the miitary, but Clinton was ok dodging it in Russia......
FO

Ditto.

Reed has a real anger managment problem, as well as a major lack of contact with reality. I'd love to watch him try to read that crap on any US military base in the world and watch the reaction. But, like the residents of Barakistan, he gets to sleep safely at night because the people he calls fools are protecting his worthless ass. (not implying that the Barakistanians are similarly worthless <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />)

++1

HBB

The things in life that make you a better person aren't easy and risk free. The problem with our society today is that most people are afraid of the risk, hard work, and danger that shaped our parents, grandparents, and so on into the people they are. Each generation is successively softer in general than the one before. Soon there won't be enough people with the right stuff to keep the barbarians out of the gates.

It happened to Greece, Rome, and every other major civilizaton too. When more men are round in the middle than hard and flat you can expect to have to learn a new language in the near future.

It is really too bad that my father, my father-in-law, myself and my sons served in the military to protect the freedom of someone the likes of Fred.

I don't know Fred, but what has he done for this country? Besides knock it?

They say war skips generations and I can attest to that. My father and father -in-law and my sons all served in combat situations. It skipped me. For that I consider them all better than myself!

The old man was an infantryman in the Pacific,... 6th Army under General William Krueger. He was already in the military and had completed his training when Pearl Harbor was bombed. Consequently, he went over very early and stayed for the duration. He went in regular army, but before the completion of the war he was recommended for placement in the Alamo Scouts,... an elite intelligence gathering branch of the Rangers. The web page which details their exploits and contributions includes his name. He was one of 11 men from his original company to survive the war.

He was rough,.. tough, and very difficult to be around,... for me and everyone else. His typical approach to child rearing was to withhold advice and allow you to learn from experience,... but when I was 18 and told him of my plans to join the Marine Corps with my buddy James,... he didn't look away from the TV,... his expression was calm,... he just slowly exhaled his cigarette smoke and quietly said,

"Boy,.... you join the military you'll wish you were dead."

Fred Reed is an idiot. Perhaps he feels that all those guys who flew ADC fighters out of Iceland were also dodgers? Or maybe it was the guys who were manning SIGINT sites at some end of world or maybe it was the Army troops on the wall separating the East from the West in Berlin. The military is a big world. You get out of it what you put into it.

Someone told me it might be dangerous when I signed up in 1985.
December 1988 at NAS Whidbey Island WA. 14 funerals for aircrew that died in "peacetime" mishaps. Two Prowlers and three Intruders.

I would not hesitate to recommend at least one tour into one young person who needs some direction in life.

You won't imply that the residents of Barakistan are drooling cretins? But I will.

A textbook case of projection.

If my country needed me I'd enlist in a heartbeat.

Red Baron. RVN 69-70

Your country does need you to enlist. Bush needs you in his version of viet nam 2. He only has a limited time,before he's out of office. So your enlistment is crucial.

Remember the winning of hearts and minds is on the line in iraq. It would also be nice if you could donate most your pay,to help buy little ragheads necessary supplies like toothpaste and shoes. They love americans,IED's are simply their way of showing it.

That Fred is a figgin idiot........imo

When I first read that column, I too thought it was a load of chit, that I presumed to be written by the typical leftist metrosexual anti American [bleep]. Then I re-read it and came to the conclusion that there is some truth in what he wrote. He just came off revealing things, very blunty, in a manor that many folks do not wanna hear. So I googled him, found his site, and read the bio and other columns he wrote.

I did like his piece on the pussification of our counrty. Good read.....
http://www.fredoneverything.net/FOE_Frame_Column.htm

If he is truely at heart anti military, and anti American, then I say fugg him as well. But at this point, I'm not so sure he is.

Okay Barak, you posted this, how 'bout you chime in <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

Barak (heart) Fred.

Interestingly enough, seems we have plenty that don't want anything to do with military or service. I suspect if that were the general consensus shortly after the 1600s, we'd be gunless right now and much more worried about who/when Harry is gonna marry than what Fred says.....

Thankful always for those in the service. Nothing and no one is perfect but we are still free and speaking English. That didnt' come from a bunch of folks that didn't want to stand up for things.

Jeff

Agreed, Jeff!
We would still be an English colony with Fred Reed's attitude, or part of the "Third Reich".
A guy has to wonder if that is not the road we are heading down, I hope not.