A Time For Change In My Life. Need Some Opinions Or Thoughts Please! [Navy]

hah you know, I can see most the AF in those rules :\ I can also point out a certain Marine unit here that will cry to us within 5 minutes of their a/c going out but almost all the AF doesn't have a/c ;-) But yes, 99% of the time, we will have a/c and most our people are fat. Finally doing something about getting those out of here though. So sick of seeing people pushing 30%+ body fat in the military who couldn't drag my 190 lb body 50 feet out of a fire fight if one happened today.

Just spent a few months in southern Helman province Afghanistan (near Camp Bastion) with a great team of Army guys. Once we closed up shop there I was sent back to an Air Force base elsewhere in Afghan. So much different ... biggest being I didn't have to ***in a garbage bag wearing 150 lbs of body armor. The Army buds I made knew how to have fun with what we had -- after patrols or whatever we did that day, everyone just relaxed and had a good time. Now here at a normal AF base I find officers who *** and whine when they can't connect to Facebook or Myspace at work, or their email is going too slow.

One thing I must say about the Army: They have to remind them 15 times a day not to do the same stupid thing, over and over.

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But enough of that!

First want to say, thanks for the choice you made to serve. My reasons where a lot like yours but I told myself only 4 years and I'm done. Now look at me, 10 years later, and E-6 just reenlisted for my second time.

The military isn't right for everyone and I hope you don't make any judgments against it in your first assignment. As a couple others already said, the lower end of the pole is the worst. Unless you get lucky and end up in a great place with a great crew right away, chances are you will be the one sweeping floors and taking out trash for the next year or two plus. But, you are getting a pay check and a pretty damn good education on top of that. Hell, I've been at places as a NCO where I'm the lowest rank and sweeping up at the end of the week still. Part of a days work -- do you job, you clean up, you go home.

I had job offers over $50K year after my first 4 year enlistment and they didn't care I didn't have any experience in the job -- they just wanted my military experience and professionalism at the job. Jobs in my field with an active Top Secret security clearance are paying $100K+ right now for me. You will be getting $50K+ if you set your goals right in the Navy, easily. The Navy has the best technical schools in my opinion and I've been to a lot of them.

So, what I'm getting at is even if you say the Navy sucks and you want out in 4-6 years -- you will get much more out of it than you had to put into, as long as you give it a try. You will have a future and employers looking for you instead of you looking for them.

You will be surprised how proud you'll feel the first time you see your family and friends back home in your new uniform. Then again the first time you return from overseas -- the amount of thanks you will get in the airports from random strangers while in uniform is almost uncanny. 10 years later, I can't say the feeling has ever went away yet each time it happens again. On my first trip to Iraq in 2004, coming through the airport in Detroit picking up my luggage I must have shaken 100 different peoples hands. Each one of them with a short story, a few words or simply a smile.

If you have the chance before they all leave us with age -- sit down with an old WW2, Vietnam or Korea vet and hear what they have to say. I've heard a few stories that would bring any person to tears.

Good luck and enjoy the time remaining with your friends and family before you head out. Don't leave on bad terms -- it will make the time and distance much harder than it should be.

PM me or post here and I'll be glad to chat about the military whenever -- don't worry, I'm not a recruiter haha. On my third deployment now and I could use something to pass the time by until I return home to my wife and child in 3-4 months! I'll try to check back here every day or so -- making a bookmark for myself now.

Clinpachi, I think it's a great decision what you are doing. I'm a former Marine. I enlisted @ age 19 in 2001 and was honorably discharged in 2005. The 4 years that I served were the most interesting years of my life I'd have to say. I deployed twice to the middle east, 6 months in Kuwait for the invasion and 9 months in Iraq with an expeditionary unit. The military gave me the opportunity to see the world. I've been to southern California, Hawaii, Australia, and Japan. Life was VERY secure. You get paid the 1st and the 15th of every month. I always had a roof over my head, even when sleeping out in the field and 3 square meals a day. When I enlisted back in 2001 I wasn't happy with my life. I was working odd warehouse jobs and life felt pretty empty. I wanted a change and change was what I got. From the moment I started bootcamp to the end of my active service it was one hell of a ride. Every day was a different day. You learn many things in the military and I can go on and on about them. I'll try to keep it short.

This is a list of what I think you'll like about military service.

- A structured life. Everything is planned in advance. Order and discipline is the hallmark of life.

- Opportunity to learn good leadership from older and more wiser career NCO's and officers. You will also encounter shitbags too but take what they say with a grain of salt lol.

- The brotherhood, camaraderie and sense of belonging to something greater than yourself is an awesome feeling.

- The people you meet. You will meet some of the most interesting characters in your life.

- Stable income and you get a raise every year. You also get paid more if you are married with a spouse.

- They provide you with a housing allowance or just give you a house on base if you have a family.

- The challenge. They force you to really look inside yourself by throwing hardships at you. This is one of the best ways to develop good character.

- After 20 years of good service you can retire and draw a retirement pension. That is money given to you until the day you die.

- A free college education. You can complete your bachelor's degree while on active-duty, they pay 100% tuition. I recommend you finish your bachelor's and submit a package requesting to become an officer. Why? Officers get paid A LOT more money. http://www.navycs.com/2010-military-pay-chart.html Check out the pay difference from enlisted to officer.

- The Post-911 GI Bill. If you decide to get out they pay for college and GIVE you a living allowance for being a full-time college student. They basically give you a pay check to attend college full-time.

- Travel. You will travel a lot.

- Good and free healthcare for your family.


Military service can be VERY demanding. It can wear you down and sometimes things won't be easy but don't let it get you down. That's life in general I guess but you learn to adapt and overcome.

As for me, I am now a full-time college student doing very well in school. For my military service Uncle Sam pays 100% of my tuition and they cut me a check every month of $1,380 (paycheck to attend college). http://www.gibill.va.gov/GI_Bill_Info/CH33/Post-911.htm Even if you decide to get out you have a free ride through college. I chose to get out because I didn't want to play in the sandbox of Iraq anymore.

The economy and this recession has really made me think about what I had. My quality of life in the service was much better than it is now that I'm a civilian again. After I get my degree I plan on talking to an OSO and I'm gonna return as a fully commissioned officer. Officers make a boatload more.

It's what you make of the experience and only YOU have the choice of what you get out of it. Some guys get in, go through the motions, get out and not learn a thing. Again, it's totally up to the individual what you get from that grand experience.

All in all, good decision I say.

I think when i wrote this post, i couldn't have asked for a better reply Bekisa. Thank you very much.

I know in my heart I'm amazing with IT and computer work, i also know what i want out of life and I'm not getting it right now at all.

Even after college what am i supposed to do when i can't find a job i just spent 4-8 years earning a degree for?

I love my fiance with all my heart and soul in the entire world. But i want to support her and do better than this. There has to be more to life than living paycheck to paycheck and moving on to the next thing every few years.

I need to get into shape anyways... i need to better myself in 100 different areas and I'm more than willing to do what it takes to fix all of this.

Especially with the recent news on Obama's healthcare idea going out the *** window thanks to HELP I AM TRAPPED IN 2006 PLEASE SEND A TIME MACHINE reasons....

I've been without healthcare, insurance, or dental work for 7 *** years

There's no fix in sight either.

I need to do this for all the right reasons. I want to do this for all the right reasons.

The only reason for me NOT to join the navy is my fiance and FFXI.

And lets face it FFXI is surely dying a slow death as of now. I love this game and dedicate myself to it as a hobby.

But it's time i move on to something that matters in life. Something i can be proud of.

I have to defiantly thank Vanderbilt as well for those words, these are all exact reasons i want to do this.

I don't mind not finishing college or becoming an officer. I can do those things later anyways after much time.

My life right now is hell on earth. My fiance is the light of my life and i can't picture putting us through this for the rest of our lives.

We were at a crossroads where we thought we were going to be homeless and i actually looked up homeless shelters.

I don't care that this is too personal or seems weak... but you never knew pain in your life until the day you looked into homeless shelters with tears in your eyes because you didn't know what you were going to do or if you were going to make it out of a bad situation

We lucked out for now, and have a place to stay. That's why i dropped my college classes this quarter to find full-time work. I have not been successful in anything that pays enough to support our lives.

Then i remembered how i wanted to join the navy after high school.

This is something that will make all of these problems go away.

I fear for Taylor more than anything else. But i know in my heart if anything bad were to happen she could at least stay with her grandma on her farm way out in BFE until i came back.

And no... i'm not joining the navy just to have health/dental insurance or benefits. I'm doing it because it will improve my quality of life and make me a better person. I'm doing it because It's something I think I'll enjoy.

Edit

1 Thing:

A~ Focus! This is what we call "Stepping Stone/Miles Stone" Keep your head high and tackle your next change head on.

I don't look at it as weakness. I see it as strength. It takes a lot of courage and strength to speak out about things like that. I know how it can be. I've always considered myself fortunate that I know if things go to ***I always have a place to fall back to (dad and other family).

I've put myself through a lot of hardship over the last 3 years to make sure my (ex)wife and my daughters were taken care of. I didn't care if I had to miss a meal as long as they got theirs.

You're doing the right thing.

Edit: Military is the reason for most of my breaks from FFXI. Between that and when I was married, I had no time. I was happy to come back to it though.

One thing about the navy unless you get some really lame not in demand rating you will advance fairly regularly. Well that is kinda a bad thing as the people who utterly fail and only stay in cause a real job would fire them or just never promote them will also make rank just by waiting out there time and testing well lol.

But yeah I had a friend was in for like 3 years and already had the equivalent rank of his dad who had been in the AF since he was a kid lol.


As far as family goes. There are alot of benefits being in the military with family. Reason why the majority of people that stay in have family. However going away for awhile is hard on a relationship and most loved ones start to hate the navy as much as the person for it. Or they become those sterotypical Navy wives /shudders.

Yeah I hope nobody took that wrong, FFXI isn't my life or something I would base a decision on lol.

Taylor is the only thing that actually MATTERS in my life at all. I only had my mother as family and she is slowly losing her mind.

Shes beginning to show heavy signs of a midlife crisis or menopause. Shes making enemies of everything and has no friends anymore. She constantly fights with my stepfather over the STUPIDEST *** reasons.

He moves her purse and she freaks the *** out and starts a fight that lasts for 2 days. And talks about a divorce.

Recently she took things out on me and i let her know what was on my mind. She tried to tell me i was a horrible person and wasn't going anywhere with my life and quite frankly i didn't deserve it.

So in short i have no family left. My mother raised me completely and I've had no contact with my real father, cousins, or sister in over 15 years. Nor do i really care to.

Luckily I'll start as E-2 or E-3 instead of E-1 so I'll already be at a slight advantage. I know that if i work hard and make myself known as hard working and willing to do what it takes I'm good to go.

This is just all a lot to take in and get used to.

Again this is why i made this post is to get information flowing and maybe find out something i didn't know.

Getting peoples experiences is always a plus.

OH and ffxi... I've had to take 2 4-6 month and a 2 month long breaks because of the navy even though only the 2 month one was I underway. The hours can be killer for no real good reason depending on what rate you chose. Lol let me see the saying is chose your rate chose your fate. So be a good idea to take to people to figure out what a rate really does and the kind of hours they put in ahead of time. Like my recruiters were both EM1 submariners and told me how easy it was being a nuke and such. No no really lol. Other than that I managed to play a bit here and there. When you on shore duty it's almost like a normal job except alot more hours and things like duty days. Depending on your rate you might even have about as much shore duty as sea duty. Hell depending on the "sea duty" you might not even go to sea that much. I mean in the years I was stationed on the USS San francisco the only time we really went anywhere was to get from Guam to washington to fix our broke *** up.

I know when I joined several years ago you could start out E-3 just by doing the all the stuff in DEPs. Also some rates like nukes start out as E-3 anyways. Not sure if there was some garunteed thing but I can't think of anyone on my submarine who didn't get busted down that wasn't at least E-3 and soon after E-4 even the new guys straight from there training schools. Hell there weren't that many E-3s lol

every thins sounds great but it's up to you to to be the better person because no one will make you and you Quality of life will not go up you will live in a room with probably 60+ people with 3 bunk beads stacked on top of each other if your lucky you will not have a top rack it will smell and not everyone will be very clean. you will try to sleep when you get the chance but people will make noise so you can not and when the aircraft take off it will be loud but you will probably get use to it and not even notice it, even though it sounds like a bomb going off in your basement every 30 seconds to every few minutes.
boot camp is a cake walk you don't need to think at all just do what your told.. how do you do running you will half to pass a timed run that can not be cheated(if you would want to cheat) and do about 60 push ups and 120 sit ups in 2 min each by the time you get out ( at a minimum)
any way i got to get back to college..
o ya i meant that your schooling wont count for any thing after your in i forgot that they will give you E-3 for that
look to see what % of people who pass your E-4 test and advance some jobs it is almost imposable because only like 4% people get to advance and the rest of the people who pass and not advance get 2 more points on your next test, i have knowen people to stay E-3 there entire 4 years because they could not advance
Good Luck I think you will do great if you want to

nukes start as e-3... go though school make E-4... singn up for 2 more years and make E-5 for a signature

thanks brahmdut ^_^ i think i have the right mentality and expect to get owned pretty badly in all aspects of boot camp.

And actually i'm making it worse on myself in expectations just so that when i get there it may or may not be as bad as i thought.

Gogo american media and movie depiction of military boot camps... that alone is enough to scare the ***out of you.

(Full Metal Jacket anyone?)

I'm actually going to leave now and head to CSCC and get a copy of my transcript and then take it to my recruiter.

I'll find out soon if I'm heading to a hotel tonight for MEPS. It'll probably be Tuesday though.

I'll be back in a few hours though to see what else people said or commented on. Thanks for everyone's support and thoughts.

This didn't turn into a flame war like i expected. (at least yet)

Make friends that night! at the hotel... that could be a good story to tell... gather up a group, go to the near by bar or restaurant, and have a gooood meal! or maybe on the night before your flight/Bus ride to boot camp.

Best of luck, The navy is great! My husband has been in a bit over 6 yrs. During those 6 yrs They have pretty much taken care of everything (base housing, health insurance, moving cost) and the pay is nice enough that I can stay home and take care of our son (and play ffxi of cuz).

We have been so lucky that he has never had to go out to a boat the entire time he has been in, He gets to play ffxi daily too! lol so maybe you wont have to leave us all behind after you finish up boot camp & school :)

I really hate reading every post so if this sounds like it's been said before please disregard.

MEPS physical is a joke. It's a loooooong process depending on how many people they have to process. It's like a normal physical checkup and they want to see any/all medical records from when you were born up until now.

It's been 11 yrs since I went through, but as much as I remember they do a motorized skills, color blind, depth perception, normal eye, throat and ear check, turn & cough(males), duck walk and hearing test. That's all that I remember them doing. If you pass everything then you'll be sworn in and be on your way to camp.

Yeah lol gotta agree with brahmdut. Bootcamp is cake. It's like just doing what your told. If you can do that within the first few times your sitting there wondering wtf is so hard about this as people around you continual fail to do simple things like making there bed a certain way or folding their clothes.

Quality of life differs alot from command to command. For example there are alot of facilities on a carrier even sub tenders are fairly well equipped. Gyms comparatively, spacous quarters, space to put your stuff, time off.

Submarines are like the opposite. Shove everyone into a very small tight space where there is just enough room to walk between racks. Make them so small that tall people will hit there feet/head on ends and fat peoples stomaches will touch the top. Then only give you space to store your stuff in a tiny little compartment under your rack. Unless of course there are too many people on board. Often happens when you have riders and then you might be "hot racking" IE you and a guy with a different watch schedule share a rack. If they can they can also have it so 3 people share 2 racks. Showering, well it eats into your sleepy time. That and there isn't exactly alot of water so your supposed to just rinse yourself down turn it off scrub up rinse off then shampoo etc. Though if the evaporator is down for whatever reason lol no showers for you! Generally you will be on watch 6 hours then 12 off. Though you will usually be doing drills or maintenance in that off time too. If you aren't fully qualified you are trying to get qualified and not really sleeping much. One benefit being on a sub is you can't be underway for the rediculous amount of time that surface boats can. I've friends who were underway for 11 months straight on carriers while sub will generally only be a month or 2. Depending on the kind and what you doing of course.

Um expect medical to suck (at shore of course at sea it's gunna suck). Most the time quality of health seems to take a backseat to well everything else. The standard treatment for most things is Vitamin "M". Ie motrin. Alot of medical policy is actually determine by how it could look for the Navys image in the worst possible conditions. So like if you are on "mind altering" prescription meds you could be disqualified from alot of stuff. And guess what that covers alot of ***. Including I read depending on what you do the nicotine patch. Or say simple anti-depressants with like 0 side effects for migraines. If you are somewhere with alot of whiny *** going in for everything half the time they will assume the same is with you and try to get you to leave as soon as possible. Dental is pretty good though. If only cause most dental work can't be done underway on some boats lol. Medical for your family will be better generally though lol. Unless of course they open you up for surgery and find out the pancreas they were supposed to have removed the year before is still there... yes happened to someones wife I know.

Chances are you will probably hate your boss. Or at least 1/2 the ones you get. Part of it has to do with the way the system works. You put your time in you do decent on the test and if you aren't one of those rates that never advance certain ranks you probably made it. Hell if you are in an indemand one you could probably just put your name on the paper. For example E-4->E-5 for nuke ET submariners was like 80% advancement when I took it. E-5->E-6 when I was supposed to take it was 94% advancement. Hell my boat was missing my rates chief (E-7) for awhile and the reason they didn't advance the guy who had been E-6 for awhile and qualified supervisor watches and good guy was... well he was overweight. The reason they didn't send us another one was cause we were in the shipyard so low priority and they had like 6 open slots for chiefs of my rate and only 4 people who qualified to be advanced that time. So yeah they advanced all of them and sent them to sea going boats lol. Then again if you get certain rates at certain ranks it just wont happen. Mostly cause it has to do with available slots. They figure they need so many people in this rate/rank and put the highest scorers there. Sometimes there just is no need. Sometimes there are some rates/ranks you can advance just by reenlisting... so if you don't well all the slots and then some have been filled by people reenlisting sucker! (Note Nuke EMs are one of those rates lol). So we pretty good chance of promotion if you just stay in long enough yeah get some crappy leadership. Especially since most rates do stuff that translates to much higher paying jobs in the civilian world. So generally the people that stay are the ones that honestly love it, people with families that are afraid to take a chance, and people who know the real world would fire there ***.

You will run into preception is reality alot. Navy is very very big on image. You can appear (but not actually) to be working for 1 sec when someone sees you and you were working hard all day. You take a break cause you have sweated up a storm and are caked in dirt and grime and you clearly have been slacking. It affects medicine like I've already discussed. It gets even more fun when dealing with say the public. You will often get speaches about doing the right thing and how you are always representing the navy. If there is a dispute between navy and civilain even if you win in civilian court navy will probably punish you. For example I knew a guy got came in bruised as hell everyday. One day his wife came in to give him dinner with a couple of bruises. People asked whats up and he said oh we fight. Without bothering to figure anything out they were trying to bust him the next day... until he called his wife in who and she told them they were sparring and that she would kick the *** of everyone there lol. I have others but too much space for now.

All that being said. You might get to travel the world. You definitely meet some interesting people and get alot of stories out of it. You learn to appreciate normal working hours alot more (though that is kinda doublesided), good training for your job in often can relate to a job outside, alot of employers like military experience and government jobs give you more points, college money (GI bill is crazy now, like pays for college and gives you housing allowance and can be given to dependents if you in long enough), well people will respect that you joined, VA has alot of helpful stuff when you get out. So yeah while I wont go in again (pay is way too low to deal with that *** even with the huge *** bonuses they were throwing at me, like 100k for another 4-5 years lol) I definitely would make the same choice over again. Though that's me and part of that is the training I got.

Sorry for the book

I havn't read all the reply's but please don't disrespect graphic design field when you have no exp in it at all and to say graphic design/photography as an easy way out in life. You have no idea wtf your talking about, this comes from a graphic designer for the past 10 years

Edit; best of luck with the navy, I myself am a navy brat XD

yeah, my test scores were high enough to keep me out of serving, but I'm sure going Navy would be a good choice. I bet being a SEAL would be kick-***.

To be more specific. Nukes start out at E-3 pay but don't wear the insignia till graduation of boat camp. After the first part of schooling what we call "A" school you are given the choice. To sign up for a total of 6 years and put on E-4 or stay at 5 year contract. This wasn't actually explained to me at the time lol. That "A" takes a couple of months to 6 months depending on rate. Then you get leave then Power school to actually teach you about nuclear power for 6 months then leave then prototype for 6 months to learn on an old *** plant well depending on which one you chose. By then you are almost at your 2 year point which is the minimum required to make E-5.

You techincally re-enlist for more than 2 years but they count the years you already were going to skill put in. This matters cause your bonus is calculated by how many years you are reenlisting for. Also there are other rates that do that in fact last I saw there were plans for a whole lot of indemand rates. But 1 benefit to reenlisting for it is your time in rate and pay get set to the previous test cycle. While if you make it off the test... well lets say I took my E-5 exam march just a little after my 2 year point so best time to take it. I didn't get paid till december 16.

Also lets say you didn't sign to get E-4... which pretty much no one does. When you take the E-4 exam chances are you are only competing against people who got busted down lol. That and there are lots of open slots. So even the nukes who got busted down tend to make E-4 back way before there 2 year point and then reenlist for E-5 right away. But if you do that cause you never added another year that means you will now have gotten E-5 as fast as anyone else and still only have 7 years on your contract total vs 8 for other people. Or 6 for the people that don't reenlist at all but signed up.

There is no Asvab score that would deny you from serving. I got 99 precentile. All that meant was they wouldn't even show me any other option then being a nuke... though someone I know with a funny name got 99 too and became a journalist or something

Also funny note early in bootcamp they show this cool vid for jobs like SEAL, and EOD (thats the guys that disarm mines and ***) and something else cool. The very next day they round up the nukes and are like yeah that doesn't apply to you lol. Nukes need not apply is a common phrase.

Oh yeah and not sure about now but as of a year or 2 ago you could do this augmentation thing where you could go serve in the middle east with the army and ***for a few months. Unless you were a nuke of course lol

I'm sorry that I have never been in the military and so therefore can't help you with any first-hand information, but I will tell you what I know. My husband's good friend Thomas joined the Navy right after high school because he was in much the same position as you. He didn't like school, he knew he'd do crummy in college, and he lived with grandparents that he didn't get along with as well as anyone would have liked. He joined the Navy planning to stay in for 4 years and become a trained Air Traffic Controller. His 4 years is up soon, but he has enjoyed it enough that he reenlisted for another 4 years.

From what he has told us, the first little while is crappy. He is stationed on an air craft carrier in Japan, and new recruits are at the bottom of the chain there. He hated it at first. Everyone above you gets to boss you around. However, the longer he has stayed in, the better it's gotten. Obviously he likes it just fine now, as he is reenlisting and hopes to stay in the Navy for at least another 4 years.

I guess, well, I can't tell you anything first-hand because I've never been there, but I guess from what I've heard from Thomas, just don't give up. Hang in there through your first couple of crappy years, and you will enjoy it after that and might even decide to make a career and a life out of it, just as Tom is.

well, I guess the other fact that I'm not a US citizen helps too. I got recruited to the Dutch army, but since they're not in a pointless war, I declined their invite.

That sorta depends on what they want you too do. They are touchy about that especailly on anything requiring even the lowest lvl of clearance. I had a dual citizen friend. Lol canada/US who they actually thought he was joking or something when he put that down. He got most the way thru A school the whole time stamping his class work as No Forn... IE not for foreign nationals lol before they were like wait a second...

Then they made him watch southpark till he renounced his canadian citizenship and *** with him daily. Ok maybe not the southpark part but still.

why would he claim himself as Canuck/American, thats just HELP I AM TRAPPED IN 2006 PLEASE SEND A TIME MACHINE?

Well, its kinda hard either way I look at it. On one hand, I can move to Europe with my BA and make great money over there, but my gf would have to jump through hoops to get dual citizenship. On the other hand, if I stay here, I'm doing the hoop jumping.

And... lol @ renounce Canadian citizenship through Southpark torture.

My guess he did it out of pride. Pride makes you do funny things. The military is big on it and so are alot of the people in it. Hell why did they fix my old *** boat when it costed quite a bit more then to just build a brand new one from scratch? Pride. Hell they still weren't completely done with it like 4 years after the accident. Not sure about now lol

This probably won't change a bit the ideas of any of you people...but there's times when you just can't be silent. I made the mistake of reading this topic and now I have to reply.
The army should be used to protect a nation in case someone is attacking it.
If things still worked like that, I would be the first to say you're doing the right thing. Protecting people is a great and noble job.
But face the thruth. Read some papers. You got internet and I suppose you don't live in China so you don't get filtered contents.
Try to understand what the army is doing all over the world.
War are started beacuse of oil needs, or worse, just to sell more weapons.
Look in Asia or in Africa, where the army protects the oil companies, and how many are killed: both innocents natives who can't understand why they're being robbed of their resources and guilty soldiers who think they're helping those natives.
Yes, guilty. Beacause in the age of communications, ignorance is a crime.
Don't be guilty.
Choose Peace.

~Send me a pm if you need to know anything else about being in the navy. Im a 2nd class and have 8yrs under my belt. May not be much to some but I can try to assist as much as I can. Been on the ship and on shore, seen most things that will trip you out and most that would be normal.