#41
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That's when i'm in the reserves? What about this active duty?
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#42
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Active duty means you're full time army. Reserve means you have a civilian job and live off-base and train on evenings and weekends.
When you're active duty, you go when your unit is scheduled to rotate. It's entirely possible (though extremely unlikely in the current US military) to do an entire term of service and never get deployed. When you're not overseas, you're in garrison, occastionally doing field training, but the truth is it involves alot of boredom and cleaning your vehicles for the umpteenth time. This all goes back to what I've been saying about the military not being like the movies, truth is you spend the vast majority of your time, including overseas, physically uncomfortable and bored out of your skull. Even as an infantryman you're unlikely to actually fire your weapon more than a few times a year. In all honesty, if they made a movie about what military life is actually like, nobody would watch it. |
#43
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That depends more on the war that it's being fought, though. Iraq and Afa-whatever have a small number of Personnel. If they were some World War 2, Vietnam style thing, then there would be more Personnel.
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#44
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My friend was in the Army just got out recently. Did 2 tours overseas, last tour was 14 to 16 months. Active duty for 6 years. He wasn't very happy. He said he knew one guy that had been on five tours. I'm not trying to discourage anyone from joining up, but that's what my friend went through. He wasn't a soldier or anything like that, but still didn't enjoy 2 trips overseas in Iraq.
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#45
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They kind of did...it was "Jarhead". Not that I'm saying I can personally vouch for its authenticity (I've never served), but it's gotta be a lot closer than most movies would have us believe.
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#46
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All I know is I wanted to see Jarhead because the trailers made it look like a cool war movie that would have some good shootouts, and I was sadly disappointed. It was drama drama drama Apocalypse Now clips oh hey sand don't leave me you hung up let me snipe this guy no okay wars over shoot the sky roll credits. It did cover the short lived Gulf War, and one guy in said war, so it made sense that it was what it was and not some cool shoot shit film. Still they marketed the hell out of it, and then you see the movie and find out the action packed trailer holds all of the action in the entire movie.
I guess it was good for what it was, but not what Hollywood made it out to be. |
#47
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Theres selective reserves, where you dont drill but can be called up i an absolute emergency. then theres active reserves, like me, who train on a regular basis , and are more likely to be called up than selective. I only know one person who was called up as a seleced reserve. He was a rage instructor and was called up a year and a half afer retiremet to train the huge amount of people joinig marines/navy after 9/11. Active reserve, well, i pack my seabag whenever a major hurricane rolls in.
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#48
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They always do that in trailers. Like all those horrendous spoof movies that came out lately (Epic, Date, Disaster, blahblahblah). The funny (and barely funny at that) stuff was in the trailer and only the trailer.
That's why I read reviews on IMDB before I watch a movie, I don't just follow the trailers alone. And I kinda liked Jarhead, apparently the novel written from Swofford's view made it seem as if you could never even picture him smile. Grim dude.
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#49
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I listened to the real Swofford on the DVD commentary, he says he was pissed he went through all the training and never got to use it. I haven't read the novel though, need to check it out.
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#50
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Quote:
"I wanted to be the first kid on my block to get a confirmed kill..."
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