How Many Army, Navy, Airforce, Marines.......

grob · 04-13-2008, 01:55 PM

2 yrs Para Gunners TA reserve here.

RabidAlien · 05-08-2008, 11:50 PM

6 years US Navy, Oct '92-Oct '98. I was a nuclear-power Electrician's Mate on submarines. Started out on my first boat in '94 out of San Diego (USS Drum SSN 677), ended up decomming that pig in '95 in Pearl Harbor. Went to the USS Cavalla SSN 684 until '98, when my early-out was denied due to a "critical lack of nuclear-qualified/sub-qualified electricians" in the fleet. Gotta love the Clinton administration. So, of course, they dumped me into a 688-class decom, having just recently completed two 637-class decoms, and expected me to learn the entire ship in the five months I had left. Heh. I was actually so sick of the military by the time that I got out, it took me until 2001 to get to the point where I could read about WW2, even though I'd always been interested in it.

Hey, Les, where were you based out of? We did DDS ops with the Seals stationed out of Ford Island several times when I was with the Cavalla, most likely during '95 and '96.

Rook58 · 05-21-2008, 05:38 AM

USMC 76-96, in at 17 as a private, commissioned in 85, retired as a captain.

Started as a grunt (0341, mortarman, cross-trained as a machine gunner and platoon radio operator) - and nope, Der Adler, I'm not sorry, it was a great way to get to blow things up... at the time, every time I saw aircraft my first thought was, "shouldn't somebody be shooting at that?" Later gained a much greater appreciation, especially after getting to be friends with a USN CSAR 53 pilot (a great guy named Steve Edson, taught CSAR at MAWTS-1 in Yuma, a relative of the great Red Mike Edson of Guadalcanal renown.) I still liked ticking the airdales off by calling their flightsuits coveralls, though.

Did tours with 3rd Mar Div (Kilo Co, 3rdBn 4th Marines, Weapons Plt.), then 1st Mar Div (81mm mortar platoon, 3rd Bn 1st Marines), then got tired of being cold and wet and reenlisted for an MOS change to data systems. Stayed in data systems after I got commissioned 'cause I wanted a family life and already had a pretty bad back and a wrecked knee; they merged the MOS with the CommO MOS and I ended up spending a lot of time cold and wet anyway by the time I punched out.

I'd do it again in a heartbeat. I loved the life, the people, the USMC culture - it made me a much better person, taught me tons about people, and 95% of the time it was one of those "this doesn't feel like work - can't believe they pay me for this!" situations. It did probably cost me a couple of marriages, but they were mistakes anyway! Both my younger brothers followed me in, and it has made the three of us even closer than we would have been - my wife shakes her head sometimes and says we're talking in code again and asks us to switch back to English.

Anyway, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

DerAdlerIstGelandet · 05-21-2008, 01:40 PM

Welcome to the forum.

All the ground pounders hated us until we had to come and extract them out of a LZ, then they loved us...

cougar32d · 05-21-2008, 01:42 PM

Yes Adler, all us ground pounders love you................happy now?

DerAdlerIstGelandet · 05-22-2008, 01:16 AM

No you don't....

Rook58 · 05-22-2008, 12:36 PM

Actually, once I did get a chance to shoot at planes - sort of. I was the newest butterbar lieutenant at MCAS Yuma, so I got assigned to be the Smoky Sam officer for one evolution of the WTI course... they would load me and a handful of Marines into a helo and fly us to some hill out in the exercise area, and we'd set up and shoot little styrofoam SAM simulators at the planes when they flew by.

Some of the pilots seemed to take it personally and would come back and buzz us close enough to cause hearing damage. One A7 almost sucked me into his intake - I think the reason he didn't get twenty feet lower and scoop me off the hilltop was that he was scared of FOD damage.

I heard about a time when the 81mm mortar platoon from 3rdBn, 9th Marines accidentally shot down a Japanese Defense Forces Phantom at Camp Fuji, but I wasn't there so I can't swear to it. The way I heard it was that the pilot disregarded the warning that the mortar range was hot so he shouldn't fly through it and had the bad luck to pass through the same little bit of sky as a six-tube fire for effect with VT fuses. They had fired half a dozen rounds from each gun and the rounds had already been in the air for a good minute or two when they heard the jet coming, and the next thing they knew there was a bunch of air bursts and a smoking Phantom crashing in the impact area. The pilot was reportedly unhurt but unhappy.

On the serious side, I saw some tragedies. I was at the crash site when a CH-53 went down on the island of Mindoro in the Philippines in October 1977 on the last day of an exercise and killed the crew and nearly all the grunts on board. That day aged me about fifty years and changed me forever. There was another all-hands-killed crash of a CH-46 from the same squadron during a trip to Fuji for cold weather training three months later, and half my platoon had debarked from that helicopter just before it went down. And one of my best friends from TBS, Cliff Hewlett, ended up as a Huey pilot and was killed when he crashed at 29 Palms. I'd seen him at the PX the day before and hadn't stopped to chitchat because he was long-winded and I was late for a staff meeting. That's always bothered me.

DerAdlerIstGelandet · 05-22-2008, 01:07 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rook58

On the serious side, I saw some tragedies. I was at the crash site when a CH-53 went down on the island of Mindoro in the Philippines in October 1977 on the last day of an exercise and killed the crew and nearly all the grunts on board. That day aged me about fifty years and changed me forever. There was another all-hands-killed crash of a CH-46 from the same squadron during a trip to Fuji for cold weather training three months later, and half my platoon had debarked from that helicopter just before it went down. And one of my best friends from TBS, Cliff Hewlett, ended up as a Huey pilot and was killed when he crashed at 29 Palms. I'd seen him at the PX the day before and hadn't stopped to chitchat because he was long-winded and I was late for a staff meeting. That's always bothered me.

You will never forget them will you? I have been to so many crash sites. Most of the time we either had to fly out and pic of the remains of the crew...

I will never forget it.

cougar32d · 05-22-2008, 01:12 PM

I've been on DART missions myself, i can still see them.......Never forget them

DerAdlerIstGelandet · 05-22-2008, 01:24 PM

I did a rescue into downtown Bacuba one time. Fortunatly a few minutes out we got the call that they had allready been rescued. I was not looking foward into flying into the town square full of insurgents.

cougar32d · 05-22-2008, 01:30 PM

Yeah, but you guys would've done it in a heartbeat....that's what counts

I know of some units that flat out refused to back up units in trouble.

DerAdlerIstGelandet · 05-22-2008, 01:44 PM

I dont see how anyone can not do it.

We would have done it for any US soldiers or our allies anyday.

cougar32d · 05-22-2008, 01:52 PM

Band of Brothers...right

RabidAlien · 05-22-2008, 10:48 PM

That's what civilians don't get. 99% of the men/women in ANY branch would brave any sort of hot LZ or beachhead or anything to help out men/women of any OTHER branch. Then, later that night, meet up in the bar, buy a few rounds, get hammered, and start a brawl with each other.

Ya just can't explain it.

Rook58 · 05-23-2008, 12:05 AM

Yeah, that "Band of Brothers" aspect means so much... there aren't many brands of civilians that grasp that. It's one of the things so many of us miss, I think. That's probably one reason a lot of cops are vets.
In grad school (counseling psychology program) we had a course on understanding people from other cultures and our professor, a funny little Aussie, told us that being Americans, we were from one of the most individualistic cultures in the world and would have great trouble grasping what a collectivist culture, one where the good of the group comes ahead of the individual, feels like. I wrote a paper on how, having been in the Marine Corps since age 17, I'd spent more than half my life at that point in a collectivist culture and was more at home in that kind of society than in mainstream America. After reflecting on it, he agreed.
You're right about never forgetting, Der Adler - I was 18 and that was my first exposure to violent death. Up to then I'd felt like being in the service was like being in the movies; that day it really hit home how deadly serious a business it is. My stepfather had served in WW2 in both oceans and had tried to get that across to me before I enlisted, but I hadn't had the frame of reference to understand. I stayed in and made it a career for multiple reasons, but one was that by the time I was up for reenlistment and was an NCO, I realized that a lot of the officers and NCOs still had that naivete and we needed leaders that understood death at a gut level and not as an abstract idea.