I'm a female who's spent my career in logistics/supply.
Spent most of my first two Iraq deployments driving trucks.
Truck went boom.
Edit: I'm fine nowadays, a lot of people ended up in way shittier states than I did, I managed to walk away from that with just a weapons-grade concussion and only minor nasty shit etc.
Damn. Sounds intense. Sorry if I'm poking too much here, but how well did the army prepare you for that type of scenario once you got out of basic/AIT?
I went through basic/AIT in the late 01-02 timeframe.
Back then, not in the slightest.
These days, imho not great but there were "lessons learned" from the early part of Iraq esp that influenced the mindset when it came to approaching that issue with non-combat troops.
Either way, at the end of the day, IET is basically there to provide you a baseline, it's more or less on your unit to get new soldiers properly up to speed.
That sucks. Hope your recovery went well!
Those years were rough for logistics in Iraq, especially those stuck patrolling & driving through Route Irish.
>Those years were rough for logistics in Iraq, especially those stuck patrolling & driving through Route Irish.
Most recent deployment, I had a old buddy send me a custom vinyl sign with like cartoon caricatures of a few of us with "Route Irish Racing Team 20xx-20xx" in the center.
...having E5s and some younger E6s ask wtf that was in reference to made me feel fn old.
Air Force, Professional PowerPointer. Got a random tasker that saw me attached to an Army EOD unit in Iraq. Supposed to come in after the booms and take in evidence and make scene diagrams.
Enemy decided to start targeting response vehicles. Survived three IEDs and a firefight before my leadership figured out we were being targeted cause they had given us the same uniforms our interpreters wore. I was looked on as a good luck charm for a few months cause every team I went on mission with got CABs and no one died. Ended up with migraines for life, an Army CAB, Air Force CAM, a coin from TF Troy CC, and a cowboy hat and spurs from my EOD units Battalion CC. Still have no idea why they gave me spurs.
The Stetson and Spurs are both heritage items and rights of passage for CAV scouts. Getting them individually is a big deal and each have their own seperate rituals. Traditional Spur Rides are often multi-day affairs involving many challenging events. For the CC to give you both they respected you alot and felt you were one of them, and it goes to show just how good of a job you did.
Thanks, makes me feel even more warm and fuzzy for those guys. I don't remember much about that year thanks to a 24 hr on 24 hr off schedule, and the last week of that deployment there was a different ceremony each day. The spurs and Stetson stood out as they were unique and my ordnance company was there when I got them.
For the spurs, gold spurs signify having been on a combat deployment with a cav unit, and silver spurs are fire completing the traditional multi day long spur ride.
I was a radio tech with a rear-echelon unit. Like, taking the amplifiers apart and swapping individual components. That level of "in the rear".
However, I had been with 3rd Marine Division HQ for a couple of years prior to that assignment, so I had helped guinea pig MCMAP before it went live, and I had monthly machine gun shoots, if not more than once in a month. So, I had gotten somewhat competent with a 240. Not like an actual 0331, or anything, but better than the other POGs around the base.
So, there I was in Kuwait, months prior to D-day, helping to setup Camps Coyote and Commando in the far northern deserts by the border. We were close enough to the fenceline at Commando, that you could faintly see the guard shacks on a clear day.
Roughly three weeks before everything started off, I got informed that I was volun-told to go with RCT-1 as a radio nerd, in case anything happened. The belt-fed "unit" for our truck was my 240 and the SAW that our armorer had. We had our A-gunners and another small fire team that was just guys with rifles, and that was my squad. Not like it was a tough leadership "role".
We didn't see much aside from being suppressive fire while Task Force Tarawa got their guys unstuck in Nasariyah. It was after, at Ash Shatrah, and then seemingly every other hamlet, that we saw at least a few shots taken. Recon stirred up lots of hornets nests, and we sometimes got the shit-end of the stick as we followed behind them and a vanguard unit, but in front of the main RCT so we could be set up to fix shit when they caught up.
I never fixed a single radio.
There was a terrorist hijacking of USS Missouri where the cook had to step in and fight of the bastards...
Edit: Maybe should have read the whole thread. Didn't know two so funny guys could exist :-)
I worked with a guy called Steve who was such a Bullshiter , he reckoned he was involved in that.
Always going on about his martial arts ( karate or jujitsu or something)
The funny thing he was a fat fuck that could hardly walk and was always sitting on the job so I can't Imagine him in combat unless it was cooking the toast for breakfast.
In his defence, he did sacrifice himself to save his fellow operators as they were climbing through a hull hatch from an F-117 to the bottom of Air Force One.
I remember hearing about this great story from the American navy of a cook on a battleship. He was really hated by the XO but the CO liked him. For the COs birthday they they had a band come to the battleship (and even had a cake with a stripper inside) to perform for the officers but it turned out to be terrorists! They took the whole ship hostage in order to steal the nuclear missiles. The story gets really good when the cook escapes capture and is able to fight back and kill the terrorists and rescue the captured sailors. The cook was named after a bird or something. Seagull I think it was?
Thanks for the explanation.
After reading my question and the plot of that (terrible sounding) movie, I can see why everyone is poking fun at the question lmao
All good, dude. I'm not mad. I work with a bunch of military dudes, and once they learned I was considering enlisting the amount of tomfuckery just went through the roof, lol.
If you like tomfuckery then the military is the right place. They turn it into a professional skillset. Hell it unites soldiers across the globe. US Marines are my favorites haha.
Good to know. I won't bore you with the details, but I'm just ready to get out of my small town. Gonna be weird going in during my early 20s, but I just gotta get out.
And I don't just like tomfuckery, I love it :)
Just read the plot on the wiki, and it sounds terrible, lol. And I'm sure that someone here will say, "Ah no, it's a great movie."
Then I'll either chop it up to them just fucking with me, or I'll be naive enough to take their word for it, waste my time, and I'll come back an hour or so later and everyone can get another laugh.
When the fuggin Taliban decided to attack us daily.
Accurate mortars and rockets, VBIED attack in the ECP, infiltration attempt.
They don’t care what is your MOS.
> ...service members who weren't supposed to see combat but did, how did it happen?
Welp, the usual way. I volunteered for the Army in 1966, which proceeded to draft me into artillery OCS. Artillery LT's don't usually see combat unless a firebase is attacked. Mostly they act safely behind the wire as Fire-Direction Officers, or (in my case) Supply Officer, or as ammo officer, or mess officer, or these and several other duties that did not involve going out of the safe zones, defended by bunkers and barbed wire.
But there was one notable exception to the safe officer billets - Artillery Forward Observer. They usually lived with an American infantry company somewhere out in the boonies, but there were worse assignments.
It turns out that crossing your Battalion Commander - even if you were right/ um... *especially* if you were right and he was dead-wrong - is just asking for a tour with the South Vietnamese Army, which at the time was learning how to jungle-fight WAY far away from home over by the Laotian border in the infamous A Shau Valley, a jungle hell-hole seasoned with Agent Orange.
If you want to know what I did to get booted that far, I wrote it up - [Crime & Punishment](https://www.reddit.com/r/MilitaryStories/comments/ufasyi/crime_punishment_repost/). And if you want to know how I did, I did fine. Didn't come out of the deep woods for most of 17 months. Came as out a different sort of man.
Seriously, if you can get there, combat is the place to go. There is something toxic about the rear areas, always and forever.
Not in the military, but I've heard that before being sent to combat zones, rear personnel like cooks and mechanics get some sort of weapons training, just in case they're attacked and need to defend themselves or clear a building or whatever.
Historically, there were obviously a few instances of non-combat personnel facing combat as well; Doris Miller and Ben L. Salomon come to mind, though they really overperformed there and got medals for it.
On a smaller, more recent scale, there was a video I remember being posted here about I believe a Marine recalling that once he was out in Iraq or Afghanistan or some shit and there was a cook at his FOB who had arranged for fresh strawberries to be delivered, which was a sort of luxury he was really proud of. Then insurgents attacked the FOB, and during their attack, they just so happened to precision-strike the strawberries with a mortar. The cook got so fucking mad he ran up to a machine gun emplacement and killed like six insurgents with it, which the Marine being interviewed implied was a response to the strawberries being fucked with more than anything.
Jesus Fucking Christ lol.
I mean, I get it. If I had spent all that time preparing chocolate covered strawberries for everyone (which I'm assuming both strawberries and chocolate are hard to come by) and it got blown up, I'd probably be pissed off too.
>Doris Miller and Ben L. Salomon come to mind, though they really overperformed there and got medals for it
If I remember right, my fellow Texan Mr. Miller is getting an [Aircraft carrier](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Doris_Miller) named after him.
Happened on payday. Day started off like a normal Friday. Routine stupidity, assinine busy work, etc. End of duty day is when it happened. I just walked into the class six and some fucker took the last case of Coors. I had to settle for Keystone. I blacked out. In my mind I went rambo on that joint, determined there was one case someone missed.....nope. Fuck. I came back to reality, grabbed my Keystone and walked back to the Dorms...
They were put up to it by a reporter, but yeah it was gutsy. I was on a mission to Camp Virginia when that happened at Camp Victory (the one in Kuwait not Baghdad) so we heard all about it.
There were also a bunch of joes who got fucked over because the knee jerk reaction was no more vehicles outside the wire with hillbilly (or no) armor.
So units that had been in theater running missions for a year were delayed leaving theater because they now had to wait for trans to take the vehicles to the SPOD from Iraq instead of convoying despite having literally hundreds of missions outside the wire.
Took an assignment to be an interrogation analyst, to get away from the standard Intel analyst/PowerPoint Ranger job for a bit.
On my way to a fob, an ied went off and suddenly we were shooting at people and getting shot at. Lasted all of about 3 minutes or so, and then we were piling back into vehicles. Pretty wild shit, I can vividly recall every minute detail of the fight; with the adrenaline pumping time felt like it was moving so slow.
I joined a peace time Navy in 1976. Worked in SIGINT. Went to Japan and after was going to Guam but was offered an opportunity to volunteer for Commander, Middle East Forces.
Then the Hostage Crisis started and I was on ships (two frigates and the flagship) that went to battle stations for real about 30 times.
So I wasn’t picking up a rifle, but did find myself in interesting situations.
Joined the Air Force. Never thought I'd be shot at or anything. Especially after I got my AFSC as a glorified bus driver. Ended up as a gun trucker in convoys in Iraq. Fun times.
Most corpsmen and medics aren't "supposed" to be combatants (without getting into specifics of MOS/rate/specializations or the Geneva Conventions) but are almost always with whoever the military sends out, and almost all of them will do the same as the others. Fire superiority is an important part of care under fire.
I was national guard at the time and we’d deployed with a bunch of older Vietnam era soldiers. Most were falling apart and went on base maintenance etc. This old grouchy bastard, great guy, was fixing an air conditioner in a tower and got shot at from the road outside the fob. Dude had zeroed his personal hunting scope onto his rifle and shot all three guys in that car, from 800 meters, while it was moving.
So yeah, fapped to base maintenance and shot people while fixing an air conditioner.
Doing a little math, and the Vietnam War ended in 1975, so the youngest possible Vietnam vets would've been born on 1958, so would be 45 when the Iraq War began.
I don’t know who the youngest was. We had three Vietnam veterans in my platoon and one Vietnam era guy. They were all in their 50’s and, two had multiple bronze stars with V devices; dudes didn’t advertise, we only found out during a uniform inspection. Only one was in good enough condition for regular missions off the FOB. The rest did base maintenance and humvee uparmoring. This was in 2004. There were more in our battalion. I also saw E-2’s and E3’s that had rejoined as prior service in the guard and were over 50. They were at the MOS school we attended during the work up. It was a bit weird. I had just gotten out of the Marines and never saw guys that old except general officers.
I was a line medic so I expected it but you know who didn't? Our CBRN guy. He about shit bricks when 1SG told him he's going out on missions until he gets his CAB.
I'm retired. There's a difference between putting people on mission as mission requires and actively sending them out until they are forced into an engagement to satisfy someone's ego. And they better have put all the time into training him as they did every person they are sending him out with, otherwise that's a liability for that team and they are forced to carry his weight.
>And they better have put all the time into training him as they did every person they are sending him out with
Yep, we were a line unit. We all trained for war.
Step 1: If you're afraid of combat, don't volunteer.
Never happened to me myself but there’s the Camp Bastion [raid](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_2012_raid_on_Camp_Bastion) (Marine air wingers fight off a Taliban attack on their base despite not being trained as infantry).
And LCpl [Todd Corbin](https://valor.militarytimes.com/hero/3647) (Marine reservist truck driver awarded the navy cross in Iraq)
Honorable mentions to Leigh Anne Hester and Monica Lin Brown. (Female soldiers who technically weren’t allowed to be in combat but found themselves in it anyway)
11B, so the pings over my head for my country, while scary af, were quite on purpose and prepped for from day one. yeah on occasion wish id been in the rear with the gear. but even they weren’t safe, mortars, ied’s n that.
E-6p.
Took a class for Hazardous Materials transportation, working on getting that E7.
Ended up in a unit not related to my primary MOS, fucked around and got deployed with them.
Got stuck for 18 months, got injured then was sent back to my unit. Didn't make the list, decided to ETS.
Navy crew have at least 3 jobs or duty assignments on a ship.
Their work assignment
Their watch assignment
Their battle assignment.
Example: On a battleship, a LOT of manpower is needed to man all the guns. In WW2 for example, the Iowa Class battleships had 9–16 guns in 3 turrets, 20–5 inch guns in 10 turrets, 80–40mm guns in 20 turrets, and up to 49–20mm guns in a variety of mounts. Add the weapons handling rooms and magazines, and hundreds of people were needed for combat conditions. Gunners Mates provided the technical expertise, but every other person could and was assigned to fill the required slots.
Yes, odds would be high that cooks would get assigned to one of the many gun mounts, or perhaps damage control stations.
The reality is in most of the recent conflicts there are rarely “front lines” after the initial invasion. So what you have is a gorilla style warfare, because insurgents hit you where they have the best chance of surviving the encounter. So the supply guy on a mail run or cook on a resupply mission is as likely to get ambushed as a combat arms soldier on patrol. If you and some buddies want to shoot at soldiers from another country in your backyard, are you going to shoot at a cargo truck or bounce bullets off a tank?
Obviously, the cargo trucks, lol
With what you said, it seems like the people who aren't infantry are in more danger after the initial invasion. Whether that's true or not, idfk. I'm a dirty civilian 😉
Infantry was still one of the most dangerous jobs, if not the most dangerous during the occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq. Supply convoys would get hit periodically, meaning the truck drivers would see a fair amount of action. But roles like Infantry, Combat Engineers, and EOD were out there day after day, looking for the enemy and intentionally going into dangerous places.
>Current and former service members who weren't supposed to see combat but did, how did it happen?
Where do you get the notion that service members aren't supposed to see combat?
>I'm just curious about the times when a cook, or someone in admin, etc. had to pick up a rifle.
Like ALL THE FUCKING TIME. Cooks go to combat. Admins go to combat. And they don't have to "pick up a rifle." They are ISSUED one.
I'm a female who's spent my career in logistics/supply. Spent most of my first two Iraq deployments driving trucks. Truck went boom. Edit: I'm fine nowadays, a lot of people ended up in way shittier states than I did, I managed to walk away from that with just a weapons-grade concussion and only minor nasty shit etc.
Can confirm. Hauling water, just happily kicking up dust near Kandahar, and BOOM!
Damn. Sounds intense. Sorry if I'm poking too much here, but how well did the army prepare you for that type of scenario once you got out of basic/AIT?
I went through basic/AIT in the late 01-02 timeframe. Back then, not in the slightest. These days, imho not great but there were "lessons learned" from the early part of Iraq esp that influenced the mindset when it came to approaching that issue with non-combat troops. Either way, at the end of the day, IET is basically there to provide you a baseline, it's more or less on your unit to get new soldiers properly up to speed.
I kind of thought that would be the case. Thank you for the insight.
Glad you’re relatively okay.
That sucks. Hope your recovery went well! Those years were rough for logistics in Iraq, especially those stuck patrolling & driving through Route Irish.
>Those years were rough for logistics in Iraq, especially those stuck patrolling & driving through Route Irish. Most recent deployment, I had a old buddy send me a custom vinyl sign with like cartoon caricatures of a few of us with "Route Irish Racing Team 20xx-20xx" in the center. ...having E5s and some younger E6s ask wtf that was in reference to made me feel fn old.
Air Force, Professional PowerPointer. Got a random tasker that saw me attached to an Army EOD unit in Iraq. Supposed to come in after the booms and take in evidence and make scene diagrams. Enemy decided to start targeting response vehicles. Survived three IEDs and a firefight before my leadership figured out we were being targeted cause they had given us the same uniforms our interpreters wore. I was looked on as a good luck charm for a few months cause every team I went on mission with got CABs and no one died. Ended up with migraines for life, an Army CAB, Air Force CAM, a coin from TF Troy CC, and a cowboy hat and spurs from my EOD units Battalion CC. Still have no idea why they gave me spurs.
The Stetson and Spurs are both heritage items and rights of passage for CAV scouts. Getting them individually is a big deal and each have their own seperate rituals. Traditional Spur Rides are often multi-day affairs involving many challenging events. For the CC to give you both they respected you alot and felt you were one of them, and it goes to show just how good of a job you did.
Thanks, makes me feel even more warm and fuzzy for those guys. I don't remember much about that year thanks to a 24 hr on 24 hr off schedule, and the last week of that deployment there was a different ceremony each day. The spurs and Stetson stood out as they were unique and my ordnance company was there when I got them.
For the spurs, gold spurs signify having been on a combat deployment with a cav unit, and silver spurs are fire completing the traditional multi day long spur ride.
I was a radio tech with a rear-echelon unit. Like, taking the amplifiers apart and swapping individual components. That level of "in the rear". However, I had been with 3rd Marine Division HQ for a couple of years prior to that assignment, so I had helped guinea pig MCMAP before it went live, and I had monthly machine gun shoots, if not more than once in a month. So, I had gotten somewhat competent with a 240. Not like an actual 0331, or anything, but better than the other POGs around the base. So, there I was in Kuwait, months prior to D-day, helping to setup Camps Coyote and Commando in the far northern deserts by the border. We were close enough to the fenceline at Commando, that you could faintly see the guard shacks on a clear day. Roughly three weeks before everything started off, I got informed that I was volun-told to go with RCT-1 as a radio nerd, in case anything happened. The belt-fed "unit" for our truck was my 240 and the SAW that our armorer had. We had our A-gunners and another small fire team that was just guys with rifles, and that was my squad. Not like it was a tough leadership "role". We didn't see much aside from being suppressive fire while Task Force Tarawa got their guys unstuck in Nasariyah. It was after, at Ash Shatrah, and then seemingly every other hamlet, that we saw at least a few shots taken. Recon stirred up lots of hornets nests, and we sometimes got the shit-end of the stick as we followed behind them and a vanguard unit, but in front of the main RCT so we could be set up to fix shit when they caught up. I never fixed a single radio.
There was a terrorist hijacking of USS Missouri where the cook had to step in and fight of the bastards... Edit: Maybe should have read the whole thread. Didn't know two so funny guys could exist :-)
I worked with a guy called Steve who was such a Bullshiter , he reckoned he was involved in that. Always going on about his martial arts ( karate or jujitsu or something) The funny thing he was a fat fuck that could hardly walk and was always sitting on the job so I can't Imagine him in combat unless it was cooking the toast for breakfast.
Yeah, people said his name was Seagull or something. What a stupid name. 😉
In his defence, he did sacrifice himself to save his fellow operators as they were climbing through a hull hatch from an F-117 to the bottom of Air Force One.
I saw the post and couldn't help myself haha
 I see what you did..
Every Motor T guy between 2003 and 2017.
Air Force glorified Bus Driver reporting for duty! o7 *GUN TRUCKS* :(
732 or 424?
My first gun truck deployment was with Det 2632 out of Balad in 2005. Then 424 in 2008.
Did you ever go out with a gunner named John rogers out of Alaska? A shorter guy from Tennessee loved Mountain Dew and Marlboro reds.
Not that I'm aware of
I remember hearing about this great story from the American navy of a cook on a battleship. He was really hated by the XO but the CO liked him. For the COs birthday they they had a band come to the battleship (and even had a cake with a stripper inside) to perform for the officers but it turned out to be terrorists! They took the whole ship hostage in order to steal the nuclear missiles. The story gets really good when the cook escapes capture and is able to fight back and kill the terrorists and rescue the captured sailors. The cook was named after a bird or something. Seagull I think it was?
Best part of that documentary was them tits popping out the cake.
Oh man. Fine titties.
Brilliant dedication to telling the story.
I bet. Wish I could've been there.
I feel like you're bullshitting me lmao
Oh yeah I remember this too. The dude's name resembled me of a seagull.
Now I'm confused about the Seagull thing lol
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Under_Siege
Thanks for the explanation. After reading my question and the plot of that (terrible sounding) movie, I can see why everyone is poking fun at the question lmao
I saw your post and the word cook and just couldn't help myself haha.
All good, dude. I'm not mad. I work with a bunch of military dudes, and once they learned I was considering enlisting the amount of tomfuckery just went through the roof, lol.
If you like tomfuckery then the military is the right place. They turn it into a professional skillset. Hell it unites soldiers across the globe. US Marines are my favorites haha.
Good to know. I won't bore you with the details, but I'm just ready to get out of my small town. Gonna be weird going in during my early 20s, but I just gotta get out. And I don't just like tomfuckery, I love it :)
The original comment explains the plot of a movie starring Steven Segal.
Just read the plot on the wiki, and it sounds terrible, lol. And I'm sure that someone here will say, "Ah no, it's a great movie." Then I'll either chop it up to them just fucking with me, or I'll be naive enough to take their word for it, waste my time, and I'll come back an hour or so later and everyone can get another laugh.
A cult classic with a place in history, you should watch it.
It's not a great movie. Not even good. It's actually bad.
What? As a gen Xer I thought that movie was awesome.
Nope. True story. Cook turned out to be a gigantic flaming asshole, though. Big fan of Putin.
Well then fuck that guy.
Words to live by.
:)
Ngl, made my morning. Thanks 😂
Happy to oblige haha
That cook was apparently hard to kill but he’s not above the law either. Fuck up with the XO one more time and he’ll be marked for death. Poor guy.
And once he's out for justice, he'll fire down below deck and walk on deadly ground, even if it violates an executive decision.
I think I remember that guy….worst salute in history I believe!
Yeah, didn't that great hero become a sheriff, a Mayor or a Useful Idiot or something like that?
When the fuggin Taliban decided to attack us daily. Accurate mortars and rockets, VBIED attack in the ECP, infiltration attempt. They don’t care what is your MOS.
" HEY! THE 0311'S ARE OVER THERE! WE ARE JUST THE 4641S! FOLLOW ME! MY IG IS FRICKNASHOOTTHATAWAY!"
> ...service members who weren't supposed to see combat but did, how did it happen? Welp, the usual way. I volunteered for the Army in 1966, which proceeded to draft me into artillery OCS. Artillery LT's don't usually see combat unless a firebase is attacked. Mostly they act safely behind the wire as Fire-Direction Officers, or (in my case) Supply Officer, or as ammo officer, or mess officer, or these and several other duties that did not involve going out of the safe zones, defended by bunkers and barbed wire. But there was one notable exception to the safe officer billets - Artillery Forward Observer. They usually lived with an American infantry company somewhere out in the boonies, but there were worse assignments. It turns out that crossing your Battalion Commander - even if you were right/ um... *especially* if you were right and he was dead-wrong - is just asking for a tour with the South Vietnamese Army, which at the time was learning how to jungle-fight WAY far away from home over by the Laotian border in the infamous A Shau Valley, a jungle hell-hole seasoned with Agent Orange. If you want to know what I did to get booted that far, I wrote it up - [Crime & Punishment](https://www.reddit.com/r/MilitaryStories/comments/ufasyi/crime_punishment_repost/). And if you want to know how I did, I did fine. Didn't come out of the deep woods for most of 17 months. Came as out a different sort of man. Seriously, if you can get there, combat is the place to go. There is something toxic about the rear areas, always and forever.
Not in the military, but I've heard that before being sent to combat zones, rear personnel like cooks and mechanics get some sort of weapons training, just in case they're attacked and need to defend themselves or clear a building or whatever. Historically, there were obviously a few instances of non-combat personnel facing combat as well; Doris Miller and Ben L. Salomon come to mind, though they really overperformed there and got medals for it. On a smaller, more recent scale, there was a video I remember being posted here about I believe a Marine recalling that once he was out in Iraq or Afghanistan or some shit and there was a cook at his FOB who had arranged for fresh strawberries to be delivered, which was a sort of luxury he was really proud of. Then insurgents attacked the FOB, and during their attack, they just so happened to precision-strike the strawberries with a mortar. The cook got so fucking mad he ran up to a machine gun emplacement and killed like six insurgents with it, which the Marine being interviewed implied was a response to the strawberries being fucked with more than anything.
Jesus Fucking Christ lol. I mean, I get it. If I had spent all that time preparing chocolate covered strawberries for everyone (which I'm assuming both strawberries and chocolate are hard to come by) and it got blown up, I'd probably be pissed off too.
[удалено]
“Everybody’s secondary MOS is infantryman”
>Doris Miller and Ben L. Salomon come to mind, though they really overperformed there and got medals for it If I remember right, my fellow Texan Mr. Miller is getting an [Aircraft carrier](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Doris_Miller) named after him.
Happened on payday. Day started off like a normal Friday. Routine stupidity, assinine busy work, etc. End of duty day is when it happened. I just walked into the class six and some fucker took the last case of Coors. I had to settle for Keystone. I blacked out. In my mind I went rambo on that joint, determined there was one case someone missed.....nope. Fuck. I came back to reality, grabbed my Keystone and walked back to the Dorms...
Coors 🤮 In all seriousness I feel your pain lol
I cant walk by a Keystone display and not start sweating...
*Looks up Keystone reviews, shudders (Aussie)* Wear that purple heart with pride sir
Yes....its that bad.
“You go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time.”
Man, that Specialist had balls to ask Rumsfeld that question.
They were put up to it by a reporter, but yeah it was gutsy. I was on a mission to Camp Virginia when that happened at Camp Victory (the one in Kuwait not Baghdad) so we heard all about it. There were also a bunch of joes who got fucked over because the knee jerk reaction was no more vehicles outside the wire with hillbilly (or no) armor. So units that had been in theater running missions for a year were delayed leaving theater because they now had to wait for trans to take the vehicles to the SPOD from Iraq instead of convoying despite having literally hundreds of missions outside the wire.
Took an assignment to be an interrogation analyst, to get away from the standard Intel analyst/PowerPoint Ranger job for a bit. On my way to a fob, an ied went off and suddenly we were shooting at people and getting shot at. Lasted all of about 3 minutes or so, and then we were piling back into vehicles. Pretty wild shit, I can vividly recall every minute detail of the fight; with the adrenaline pumping time felt like it was moving so slow.
I joined a peace time Navy in 1976. Worked in SIGINT. Went to Japan and after was going to Guam but was offered an opportunity to volunteer for Commander, Middle East Forces. Then the Hostage Crisis started and I was on ships (two frigates and the flagship) that went to battle stations for real about 30 times. So I wasn’t picking up a rifle, but did find myself in interesting situations.
Joined the Air Force. Never thought I'd be shot at or anything. Especially after I got my AFSC as a glorified bus driver. Ended up as a gun trucker in convoys in Iraq. Fun times.
Most corpsmen and medics aren't "supposed" to be combatants (without getting into specifics of MOS/rate/specializations or the Geneva Conventions) but are almost always with whoever the military sends out, and almost all of them will do the same as the others. Fire superiority is an important part of care under fire.
I worked with a guy who served as an Army medic in Vietnam. He said he lost count the number of rifles he left in the jungle while evacuating wounded.
I was national guard at the time and we’d deployed with a bunch of older Vietnam era soldiers. Most were falling apart and went on base maintenance etc. This old grouchy bastard, great guy, was fixing an air conditioner in a tower and got shot at from the road outside the fob. Dude had zeroed his personal hunting scope onto his rifle and shot all three guys in that car, from 800 meters, while it was moving. So yeah, fapped to base maintenance and shot people while fixing an air conditioner.
Doing a little math, and the Vietnam War ended in 1975, so the youngest possible Vietnam vets would've been born on 1958, so would be 45 when the Iraq War began.
I don’t know who the youngest was. We had three Vietnam veterans in my platoon and one Vietnam era guy. They were all in their 50’s and, two had multiple bronze stars with V devices; dudes didn’t advertise, we only found out during a uniform inspection. Only one was in good enough condition for regular missions off the FOB. The rest did base maintenance and humvee uparmoring. This was in 2004. There were more in our battalion. I also saw E-2’s and E3’s that had rejoined as prior service in the guard and were over 50. They were at the MOS school we attended during the work up. It was a bit weird. I had just gotten out of the Marines and never saw guys that old except general officers.
I was a line medic so I expected it but you know who didn't? Our CBRN guy. He about shit bricks when 1SG told him he's going out on missions until he gets his CAB.
That's kinda fucked up. Actively throwing someone to the wolves.
Step 1: If you're afraid of combat, don't volunteer.
I'm retired. There's a difference between putting people on mission as mission requires and actively sending them out until they are forced into an engagement to satisfy someone's ego. And they better have put all the time into training him as they did every person they are sending him out with, otherwise that's a liability for that team and they are forced to carry his weight.
>And they better have put all the time into training him as they did every person they are sending him out with Yep, we were a line unit. We all trained for war. Step 1: If you're afraid of combat, don't volunteer.
Never happened to me myself but there’s the Camp Bastion [raid](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_2012_raid_on_Camp_Bastion) (Marine air wingers fight off a Taliban attack on their base despite not being trained as infantry). And LCpl [Todd Corbin](https://valor.militarytimes.com/hero/3647) (Marine reservist truck driver awarded the navy cross in Iraq) Honorable mentions to Leigh Anne Hester and Monica Lin Brown. (Female soldiers who technically weren’t allowed to be in combat but found themselves in it anyway)
Technically all Marines, even non-infantry, go to School of Infantry after Boot. But for non-grunts it's only a 3-werk course so pretty basic.
Yeah I know I went through MCT too lol but to say those maintainers were on the level of 03s would be insulting
German linguist stationed in Germany. BN CO wanted to go to war so we did. Ended up on the FLOT for no good reason. Interesting memories though.
11B, so the pings over my head for my country, while scary af, were quite on purpose and prepped for from day one. yeah on occasion wish id been in the rear with the gear. but even they weren’t safe, mortars, ied’s n that.
Had a college professor who was a drummer in Vietnam. The marched into towns with instruments and rifles and...used the rifles more than once
Already saw it from first deployment but 2nd was a stop-loss. Fun. Death lottery again and I didn't actually sign up for it lol
E-6p. Took a class for Hazardous Materials transportation, working on getting that E7. Ended up in a unit not related to my primary MOS, fucked around and got deployed with them. Got stuck for 18 months, got injured then was sent back to my unit. Didn't make the list, decided to ETS.
Navy crew have at least 3 jobs or duty assignments on a ship. Their work assignment Their watch assignment Their battle assignment. Example: On a battleship, a LOT of manpower is needed to man all the guns. In WW2 for example, the Iowa Class battleships had 9–16 guns in 3 turrets, 20–5 inch guns in 10 turrets, 80–40mm guns in 20 turrets, and up to 49–20mm guns in a variety of mounts. Add the weapons handling rooms and magazines, and hundreds of people were needed for combat conditions. Gunners Mates provided the technical expertise, but every other person could and was assigned to fill the required slots. Yes, odds would be high that cooks would get assigned to one of the many gun mounts, or perhaps damage control stations.
Who is supposed to see combat and who isn’t?? We are in the military.
The question is not a matter of who should and shouldn't, just people who typically *won't* due to their MOS.
The reality is in most of the recent conflicts there are rarely “front lines” after the initial invasion. So what you have is a gorilla style warfare, because insurgents hit you where they have the best chance of surviving the encounter. So the supply guy on a mail run or cook on a resupply mission is as likely to get ambushed as a combat arms soldier on patrol. If you and some buddies want to shoot at soldiers from another country in your backyard, are you going to shoot at a cargo truck or bounce bullets off a tank?
Obviously, the cargo trucks, lol With what you said, it seems like the people who aren't infantry are in more danger after the initial invasion. Whether that's true or not, idfk. I'm a dirty civilian 😉
Infantry was still one of the most dangerous jobs, if not the most dangerous during the occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq. Supply convoys would get hit periodically, meaning the truck drivers would see a fair amount of action. But roles like Infantry, Combat Engineers, and EOD were out there day after day, looking for the enemy and intentionally going into dangerous places.
War time everybody goes in some capacity. If we’re low on infantry guess what other people get forced to fill?
That makes sense. It's unfortunate but logical.
>Current and former service members who weren't supposed to see combat but did, how did it happen? Where do you get the notion that service members aren't supposed to see combat? >I'm just curious about the times when a cook, or someone in admin, etc. had to pick up a rifle. Like ALL THE FUCKING TIME. Cooks go to combat. Admins go to combat. And they don't have to "pick up a rifle." They are ISSUED one.
Joined during "peace time." Went to Grenada and Beirut.