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