Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire How many of you have lived overseas?

I've never even been out of the southeastern USA.

Your lucky

I "lived'' in South Vietnam for 13 months.

Same here. Jan '67-Feb '68. 9th Division air-mobile 105 Howitzers.

Don’t you mean TDY..

Spent a good deal of time with an eye on the horizon. PSA ruined that.

worked in Northern Russia 95&96 then went to Sakhalin island for 04-06.

Just a different perspective.

Choosing to move you and yours and live somewhere vs being told to. No offense intended towards servicemen implied or overt.

For example, for all the guys here that were stationed overseas, would you have gone to that same place and lived there if it was for a different career and you had a choice, or would you have chosen a different country?

Not Redneck, but I was a submariner too. It mainly depends on the boat SSN vs SSBN, I was on SSBN’s so mainly American ports. I did go to Gibraltar, Barbatos, Canada and the Bahamas though.

Thanks LBP!

Was curious. With the level of security around them I wondered.

Would Attack Subs go to more ports, or less?

Hey, sounds like the Peace Corps 🙂

Germany 3 years

Korea while marching in the Legions.

I see. Then if it had been my choice, Italy and Korea yes.

I will say that being sent other places did open my eyes to areas I wouldn't even think about otherwise.

Most of the "upper stans" are shockingly beautiful and the country folk friendly to a fault. Like many places they are openly curious about you and where you're from and basically demand to feed you.

As to the "raw experience" I agree. I did a lot of that with just one other team mate and we were on our own. The only other Americans in country being embassy staff who wanted little to do with us. Had some great experiences for sure.

Generally two armed topside watches in port. Attack boats definitely get more port calls than boomers.

It's hard for people to understand the difference, sometimes, between LIVING in a foreign country and VISITING a foreign country.

Living on base in a foreign country makes it very difficult to have anything but a visitor's experience. Going to a foreign country, finding your own place to live, a job, a social circle, a financial life, obtaining all the licenses, permits and authorizations for daily life, learning enough of the language to court a young lady......that creates an entirely different experience.

My friends that are prior service who were stationed overseas say the same thing. Different animal.

The reason I worded my post the way I did I had a recent conversation on my mind. There is a guy I work with that was getting his balls busted (in a friendly manner) for living his whole life in Cali, born and raised in LA suburb and professional life in San Diego. He’s in his late 50s now, been in MT for 2 years and is an expert in all things Montana lol. He trots out the line “I lived here back in the late 80s”. When I told him no you didn’t, you were stationed at the AF base in Great Falls for a couple years, you didn’t move here he got as bitchy as some of the guys here do. I was differentiating between the 2 is all.

While I see where you're coming from, not all experiences are the same. Being married we didn't live on base, had to pay rent and for utilities, pay licensing fees and insurance for a vehicle, did 75% of our shopping in the community, our daughter was born with a health issue that required a few trips to a children's hospital in London so we had some experience with British Healthcare system. About the only time I hit the chowhall was when I was pulling alert duty...

I lived in Egypt for a year after I graduated from high school. I attended the American University in Cairo while I was there. It was quite interesting.

Since then I've traveled a good deal. I've been to about 60 different countries and have visited all the continents except for Antarctica. There are lots of interesting places to see.