From Chewed Up Soldier to Motivational Speaker? Are You Kidding Me?!

Well, just when I thought I’ve seen it all!  About a month ago, I was on Facebook as I seem to look at every day.  In the section of where they the “People You May Know” friend suggestions, I came upon a former Soldier I was put in charge of back when I was stationed at Ft. Campbell.  At first, seeing her picture, I was pretty disgusted but yet I checked her profile anyways.  While on her profile, I saw she had of her own page, so I checked that out and lo and behold, this former Soldier is now a motivational speaker/coach.  I have to be honest, I was laughing so hard when I saw this page on Facebook.  I almost began to think that this was some of a joke.  However, that page was not a joke and this former Soldier is now a motivational speaker, and from the looks of it, she is very serious about it.  I began to wonder about this, and think who or what is trying to motivate?  Other people, that try to milk the system by faking an injury like she did when she was in the Army?  How to take advantage of the government?  It was Soldiers like her that gave meaning to the phrase Blue Falcon.  First off, she had an extremely bad attitude when it came to doing work and being at work call.  One thing that really pissed me off was when she got a dead man’s profile, so much so to where she didn’t do anything except show up to work call.  I remember her saying it was because of her back, which I find ironic being when I saw her page, she talks about working out all the time and going to the gym.  As a result of her dead man’s profile, she couldn’t drive a HMMV, do any kind of lifting, or do or even be present working in PMCS with vehicles in the motor pool.  This was so aggravating and irritating enough, and then all of a sudden, she gets another female Soldier from my section to literally do the same thing!  As a result, there would be two Soldiers doing absolutely nothing while it was just leaders and some Soldiers doing the tasks in our shop.  I mean, there was even a Soldier in our section that got blown up while deployed in Iraq, had his back reconstructed, and still was doing some of the hard work for our missions.  This Soldier would literally not lift a finger to do anything because it stated in her profile that she couldn’t.  She never deployed to a combat zone, in fact, she even told me and some of our supervisors that she would rather get a dishonorable discharge than go to a combat zone.  What gall she has to say such a thing, especially knowing that I knew friends that got killed by a suicide bomber in Afghanistan.  I also remember someone telling me that she intentionally got pregnant one time just so she couldn’t get deployed.  I’m not one hundred percent sure about that, but I wouldn’t put it past her.  Plus, she would make excuses to not come into work or try to come in late because of having a baby and unable to try to get a babysitter.  Don’t get me wrong, I can understand having a child will lead to some issues at hand, but that doesn’t mean you should make that an excuse to not be in work and so forth.  Especially when you’re in the Military because they’re not going to feel sorry for you for anything.  All that the Military will say is “You shouldn’t have gotten pregnant.”  Then, this Soldier tried to get my supervisor to let her leave early from work so she can go to the gym.  I remember my supervisor telling her, “We get off work at 1700, you can go to the gym then.”  Of course, she made her child as an excuse saying she was unable to go to the gym after work because she would have her kid and was unable to get a babysitter.  This sounded very odd being she was married, so why not the husband watch their kid?  Then she gets into a frenzy and starts saying she will go to the IG office on base and report our supervisor for not letting her leave early from work.  It was such a fucking mess, between her and the other female Soldier in our section, because the other Soldier would start pulling the same garbage of trying not to be at work as well.  I still remember her excuse about wanting to leave early from work, “Well, all we’re going to do is sit there anyways.  I can’t do any of the work, so I’m just stuck playing on the computer.”  It was getting so ridiculous that only one or two Soldiers out of an entire section of six Soldiers can do any kind of work.  Along with them not doing anything and trying to get out of being at work, the final straw came when these two Soldiers tried to play the race game on just about everything, considering both them were black just so they can get my supervisor in trouble.  Once that started happening, another supervisor came back into our section due to his orders being canceled to deploy to Afghanistan, which at the time the unit I was in was forward deployed and we were in the rear detachment.  I and the other supervisor informed him what was going on with these two Soldiers, so he decided to talk to them and try to work something out.  Of course, these two Soldiers talked to them as though he should bend over and tolerate their current position with profiles, children, and so forth.  Thankfully for that supervisor, he didn’t put up with the garbage and immediately got them moved out of our section.  To this day, I still don’t understand with some people who join the Military.  Whether they think they don’t have to go to a combat zone or to think they can get on a dead man profile and not come into work at all.  I can’t stand that way of thinking, that idea of not doing any kind of work but when it comes to payday, they’re the first to come up with their hand open and saying “Gimmie” for their pay.  Now that the female Soldier is a motivational speaker, most likely giving people the wrong advice.  I don’t want to give this person any kind of publicity, but here’s the link to her page if you have a good laugh. 

Some people just need to get their head out and see life as it is. 

Disclaimer:The views expressed in this article [or, book, blog post, essay, op-ed] are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the [insert your agency, institution, organization], Department of the Army, Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.

The Angry Private!

US Army Ordnance Corps 2009-2017

OEF 2010-2011

One Year Since My ETS

I was going to write this and publish this yesterday, but I got taught into drinking a lot of mead and playing guitar so it didn’t work out as planned.  Today, however, I’m getting it done.  Well, I still can’t it, one year since I took off the uniform for good.  Do I miss it?  Some of the things I do miss, like knowing a couple like-minded people over the seven and a half years I was in.  Unfortunately, there are a lot more things I don’t miss, such as the immense toxic leadership, the backstabbing, and overall poor quality of troops from the E-1 Private to the Four-Star General.  I began to reminisce about my entire in the Army the past couple of days and just thought about all the good and bad things that happened to me.  Throughout my time, I had three duty stations, went to Afghanistan for a year, and did a South Korea tour.  I actually made Sergeant, even though it was late in my career, and after being a Corporal for a few years.  Overall, I would say my time in the Army was disappointing because of how the Military is in this day of age.  For every one good thing that happened to me, a dozen bad things would follow suit for some reason.  Plus, the sad part of this all is, the best time I had in the Army was in Basic Training!  Once graduating Basic, it became a slow and steady decline from AIT to my last duty station of Ft. Carson.  However, of all the rubbish I had to deal with, I still don’t regret joining the Army.  The reason for that is only one percent of the US population serves in the Armed Forces, so that means ninety-nine percent either chose not to join due to other opportunities at hand, had medical issues, or just plain scared and said “fuck that shit!” 

I joined the Army at a time when I was in a huge rut.  I was living with a buddy of mine in Illinois who was living with this father that had some mental issues.  I knew my buddy for a long time, and I knew about how his father was.  His father was a hoarder and a very bad one on top of that.  There are many other things I could talk about with him, but I’ll do that at a later time.  I moved in with my buddy after I got into a huge argument with my father and decided I didn’t want to put up with his crap anymore.  Anyways, I lived with my buddy for about two years before leaving for Basic Training.  I remember signing up in May of 2009 at the recruiting station in town.  It was hilarious, I dressed up like I was going to a job interview; dress shirt, pants, and a tie.  However, it worked to my advantage because I gave the recruiter I worked with a great impression to the point that he rushed me into MEPS and immediately got me started in the Future Soldier Program that was held in their Recruiting Unit.  It kind of sucked that I had to wait six months to leave for Basic Training, but I got prepared as much as I could with the time I was given.  I left in Nov. 2009 to go to Ft. Knox, where my Basic Training would be held at.  I was originally supposed to go to Ft. Jackson, but my orders got changed at the last minute when I was at MEPS about to be shipped to Basic.  At first, I wasn’t too happy about the change of order, but in the end, after seeing a lot of the Soldiers coming out of Ft. Jackson while in AIT, I was glad of the change.  Basic Training, despite the craziness of it all, in the end, would be a great experience for me.  It really showed me what I was made of.  I will be starting a writing project about my Basic Training experience in the next couple of months, so be on the lookout for that.  My AIT was held at Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, AL.  I was a squad leader during my time there, so really kind of enjoying myself the little freedom I had when I was off duty was a bit hard.  It was, however, my first taste of leadership in the Army, so it was beneficial in the later years.  My first duty station was Ft. Campbell, which at first, I was happy about because it’s home to the 101^st Airborne Division and I was happy to be part of such a historical unit.  Unfortunately, it only lasted for the first two, maybe three months of my time there.  Immediately, I began to see how the Army really was, with its toxic leadership and its two-faced, egomaniac hypocrisy.  But I was able to go to Afghanistan while stationed there and became a Corporal despite having a First Sergeant that didn’t think I should’ve been in the Army, to begin with.  I was there for four years, and after that, I went to South Korea, which was literally one of the worst, if not the worst, duty stations in the US Army.  It was like going back to TRADOC, being in AIT all over again.  Luckily, I was only there for a year but lost my Corporal rank due to mouthing off at my Company Commander.  Finally, I went to Ft. Carson.  That place was a trip, seriously.  I never saw a base that did so much field training and never deploy to a combat zone.  Literally, their field operations were the base’s deployments.  That base burnt out so many Soldiers of field training, it made them literally run out of the Army in a heartbeat.  I’ve never been to a base where there were so many Soldiers that wanted to leave the Army immediately, so much so Ft. Carson had a hard time retaining troops.  This is another story I will about in later entries here in this blog, and the same goes for much of the topics I’ve spoken here.

Glad to be able to take this uniform off

 

I still don’t that it’s been one year since I finally taken the uniform off once and for all.  Also, I still think about all the people I ran into during my seven and half years in that said it was a mistake to join.  I remember the guy I used to be friends with that I went to Basic Training by saying “I should’ve listened to the lyrics more carefully” about his decision of joining the Army after going by a song from Metallica.  

He even wrote a blog about why he got out of the Army, seventeen reasons in all.  I would put a link to that blog, but I am not going to promote that asshole in any way, so I’ll let you all try to find it.  I still would like to think I did something very good, despite getting seriously injured and having some major mental issues from my time in the Army.  But, I will say this for my final thoughts on this topic: I am happy that I served in the Military, but I am even happier with being out of the Military.  I have spoken.

Another final thought on being out of the Army

Disclaimer:The views expressed in this article [or, book, blog post, essay, op-ed] are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the [insert your agency, institution, organization], Department of the Army, Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.

The Angry Private! 

US Army Ordnance Corps 2009-2017

OEF 2010-2011