Please read my advice as follows before even seeing a US military recruiter's office if you haven't done so already and please pass it on to your teen/young-adult children and others taking a military career into consideration. Thank you. 1. Military recruiters are known to lie: take everything they say with a grain of salt. 2. You will not be allowed to drink or smoke at all in basic training, period. 3. You will take a physical, interview, sign the enlistment deal and swear in at a place called MEPS: there are cranky people there who will raise their voices at you in the manner of a drill sergeant to try to tempt you to say something back. Their sole job is to try to keep you out of the military if at all possible. They are testing your attitude as well as checking your pulse. MEPS = military entrance processing station, there are mean civilian doctors working there. You might be asked to sign your full legal name on the enlistment contract. This is not customary for signing checks and such. Be sure to practice signing with your full middle name spelled out at home the day before going to the MEPS station to sign up. If you goof by signing only your middle initial on the contract, you might get yelled at. Don't be a victim of muscle memory here! Expect a lot of scolding and patronizing from civilians employed in the service as well as ranking military personnel. 4. Do NOT try to have your mother and other family members meet you at the airport, train station or Greyhound station on ship-out day. Your last kisses goodbye to mom should be done before you even step inside your recruiter's car to ship out on ship-out day. Ship-out = travel to basic training. 5. On ship-out day, your recruiter will drive you to a MEPS facility from your home before the sun comes up in the morning. You will be given a spot physical and put on a bus to an airport, train station or Greyhound station. You will be put in a travel group and a leader will be assigned. You will be instructed to get directly on board the airplane, bus or train and not stop for any reason along the way. Yes, you will be baby-sat all the way to basic training (military reception) from the MEPS facility. The arrogant newbee "handlers" will take over from there at the arrival airport, train station or Greyhound station. An ugly cramped military bus will shuttle you to the reception facility at your boot camp station. 6. There is a long-standing notorious way of operation in the service called "hurry up and wait". Nothing in the military service is ever neatly planned and scheduled. 7. Heavy-handed gun control. You are not sleeping with a personal pistol in your nightstand in a military barracks or a personal shotgun by your bunk bed. You are not allowed to be packing concealed personal handguns on base. Of course, this is why military installations have been such soft targets for random shootings. At military reception, you will be told to drop any "contraband" you have into a so-called "amnesty" box. "Contraband" to the military is personal guns, personal ammo, smokes, dope and alcohol. If you feel you must have a personal firearm glued to you 24/7, the service might not be your cup of tea. Questions 1. Is anybody here considering military service? 2. Does anybody here have family members or other person's you know considering joining the military? I went into the Army in 1988. I'm a Veteran. I don't know how much the military has changed since the late 1980's, but my advice here is based upon my own experiences signing up and it might be wise to heed this advice for anybody thinking about joining the service. PS - I once got yelled at a gun shop for making mistakes while filling out a DROS to buy a gun. This guy no doubt worked at a MEPS station.
Been there/done that .. 1976-'82 USMC .. I can still remember getting off the bus at MCRD and being yelled at to get on those yellow foot prints and having my head shaved soon after .... meeting the 'handlers' were one thing, but 'meeting the DI's was something else ... it WILL change ones life forever... very glad I did it ...
The thing that surprised me the most was that civilians often talked harsher to the recruits than some of the NCO's. A 50-something army sergeant at MEPS was the one who raised his voice at me for signing the contract like a check is ordinarily signed. Cantankerous old fart. One older civilian doctor yelled at me to drop my underwear with his teeth clenched together. I didn't understand what the devil he said and he repeated it much clearer the second time. SHORTS, DOWN!! The first time it sounded like TOUCHDOWN! in a muffled fashioned. He then yelled, "Don't you understand English! Now, hurry up!!" I felt like telling this jerk to open up his _____ (fill in the blank) mouth when he talked. That backtalk would have otherwise ended the whole army-joining process summarily, of course. My recruiting NCO wasn't lying when he said the MEPS will do their damnedest to keep you out of the service. The MEPS civilians are trained to screw with your head when you go through that whole circus. I did notice that when you go through MEPS as prior service, you are spoken to in a much nicer tone. They know exactly who the noobs are. Make no mistake about it. However, an uppity female army sergeant told me not to use the elevator while I was carrying two full duffle bags in the fall of 1989 at the MEPS. I had to hump those bags in the stairwell like any good grunt. I had signed up to go active duty to Fort Sill, Oklahoma following a year in the army reserves. A navy guy in uniform slapped a young man's baseball hat right off his head at the MEPS station for wearing a hat inside the military building in 1989 while I was transitioning to active duty. The young man was in civies. A new recruit or recruit candidate. You know about the anal military hat etiquette already. A hat slapping incident might bring criminal battery charges against someone working at a MEPS station. Remember the film, Patton.
First off thank you both for serving. Hahaha! As for the civilians who think they are a tough guy... I got a polygraph test going into police work. Guy is aggressively grabbing and twisting my fingers as he prints me. I began laughing and he gets all pissed. Ask me what is so funny. I said "you" and then told him I knew he was trying to elicit a neg response from me. Lol
Maybe ex-DOD civilians at the cop academy. DOD civilians around military personnel (especially low-ranking enlisted) are an arrogant, haughty bunch. In basic training, civilian PX workers (mostly women) would order the trainees around in the store. The drill sergeants would march us to and from the PX to get shaving supplies and such. They did that chow-hall-style parade rest crap while even standing in line as PX customers.
I was never in the military, I did get involved in teaching and training national guard troops for firefighting. I was a crew boss for a marine crew out in Idaho, they constantly complained. Out in South Dakota we had troops in camp, chow time they thought they could show up in just hop in line with their buddies in front of the line. I walked up and said gentlemen you can go back to the end of the line line everybody else, or I can go find your CO and make this a **** show for you.
My MEPS experience was nothing like the OP's. I sure as hell was not picked up at my house and brought anywhere. Agree with the hurry up and wait. Only the Army (I was Air Force attached to the Army TDY in Honduras) would get you up at 3 AM to have you on the flight line at 7 AM for a noon flight. And tell you the "fly boys" were late.
INDEED, PERHAPS SOME THINGS ARE BETTER LEFT UNSAID AND NOT SHARED WITH OTHERS. Some people's souls are more at peace when they vent things. Get things off one's chest. Suffice it say, I do believe the military has never been exactly a nice place for a human to find oneself in, voluntarily or involuntarily.
It was a sure fire way to grow up. Went in some addle brained kid with no direction. Came out with enough knowledge and life experience to make and build a good life. However I did serve with some who left service much more screwed up than when they went in. I guess it was an opportunity to make the best or worst out of.
