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Alternate perspective: I was in Iraq and Afghanistan, I don't talk about it because theres not much to say. I was either standing or sitting some place on guard

by pram 4y ago

Alternate perspective: I was in Iraq and Afghanistan, I don't talk about it because theres not much to say. I was either standing or sitting some place on guard duty, wired up on an insane amount of caffeine and nicotine, trying not to go insane for the 12 hour shifts. The only thing that punctuated the boredom was the daily mortar attack alarms lol

warner25 4y ago
I'm happy to talk to people about my experiences in Afghanistan, but yeah, I only have a few minutes worth of "war stories" to tell. One of the things that most non-veterans don't grasp is just how mundane day-to-day military life can be, even in a combat zone, like how people without a security clearance can't imagine how mundane most SECRET material really is. I find it hard to explain, but life is both different in quirky ways (various restrictions on freedoms, being judged professionally by your height/weight and 2-mile running time, random attacks by mortar fire, etc.) and dominated by many of the same experiences and concerns of civilian life (time spent just acquiring and eating food, dealing with traffic and bureaucracy, being frustrated by your assigned Windows machine on the enterprise network, etc.). One of my personal takeaways from my time in Afghanistan is just how widely variable everyone's "combat" experience can be. I flew helicopters, so I saw the whole range of living conditions on a daily basis: everything from the smallest observation posts where squads lived in filth and got attacked routinely by well-aimed direct fire, to the large airbases like Bagram where people worked 9-5 in a cubicle and had many amenities that were even nicer than what was back home at Fort Bragg. And where you ended up on that spectrum seemed quite arbitrary and luck-of-the-draw. Some otherwise interchangeable helicopter units just flew VIPs back and forth between Bagram and Kabul while others flew SEAL teams on very-high-risk raids every night. So when someone says they did a tour in Afghanistan (even if they earned a Bronze Star or a Combat Action Badge), that doesn't mean much to me, in itself. Edited to add: I think the variance among people who "served in WWII" is orders-of-magnitude greater. There were just so many millions of people in uniform in so many diverse places.
- RalfWausE 4y ago
  I heard a similar story from a relative of me: He was in the Waffen SS and fought the war basically behind a typewriter in a depot.
  - wongarsu 4y ago
    In WWII, "combat troops" made up only 20% of US military personnel, with the rest running support, logistics, etc. For the Germans it was closer to 60% for infantry and 50% for panzer divisions. So if you were drafted, even as a German you had a nearly 50% chance to be assigned a position where you weren't expected to see combat. And on top of that there's the combat troops defending targets that weren't attacked by the enemy. But with some bad luck you might have ended up fighting at Stalingrad. War isn't fair, on so many levels. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tooth-to-tail_ratio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tooth-to-tail_ratio
eyelidlessness 4y ago
- pram 4y ago
  Yes I really regret personally starting the war now, thanks.
  - eyelidlessness 4y ago
    Yo, you laughed about how bored you were because it was so uneventful. It was uneventful for you. I’m not blaming you for the wars, but I do think some perspective on how they affected others is warranted.
    - kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 4y ago
      And you know they don't have a good perspective on this how exactly? Judge not, lest ye be judged
      - eyelidlessness 4y ago
    - pram 4y ago
      I’m frankly shocked you can’t comprehend that there could be a difference between my personal experience and overall opinion and perspective of the war. Yes it was an absolutely pointless monumental disaster with incredible suffering. No shit.
      - eyelidlessness 4y ago
        Look. I wouldn’t have said a thing about it if you didn’t laugh about being bored by the routine suffering of others. Maybe you have more to talk about than you think?
        4y ago
seanmcdirmid 4y ago
Whenever I asked my dad about his time in Vietnam, he said something similar, but less comfortable (sleeping in a hot humid bungalow with no AC and lots of rats). I wished I dug a bit deeper.
_0w8t 4y ago
My grandfather was a partisan in Belarus during WWII. He told a few real battle/fight stories. But those stories can fill like 1% of the time. He rarely talked about the 99% he spent surviving in forests and swamps. And when he talked it was mostly about skills like sleeping in a forest when it was -30…

by pram 4y ago

warner25 4y ago

I'm happy to talk to people about my experiences in Afghanistan, but yeah, I only have a few minutes worth of "war stories" to tell. One of the things that most non-veterans don't grasp is just how mundane day-to-day military life can be, even in a combat zone, like how people without a security clearance can't imagine how mundane most SECRET material really is. I find it hard to explain, but life is both different in quirky ways (various restrictions on freedoms, being judged professionally by your height/weight and 2-mile running time, random attacks by mortar fire, etc.) and dominated by many of the same experiences and concerns of civilian life (time spent just acquiring and eating food, dealing with traffic and bureaucracy, being frustrated by your assigned Windows machine on the enterprise network, etc.). One of my personal takeaways from my time in Afghanistan is just how widely variable everyone's "combat" experience can be. I flew helicopters, so I saw the whole range of living conditions on a daily basis: everything from the smallest observation posts where squads lived in filth and got attacked routinely by well-aimed direct fire, to the large airbases like Bagram where people worked 9-5 in a cubicle and had many amenities that were even nicer than what was back home at Fort Bragg. And where you ended up on that spectrum seemed quite arbitrary and luck-of-the-draw. Some otherwise interchangeable helicopter units just flew VIPs back and forth between Bagram and Kabul while others flew SEAL teams on very-high-risk raids every night. So when someone says they did a tour in Afghanistan (even if they earned a Bronze Star or a Combat Action Badge), that doesn't mean much to me, in itself. Edited to add: I think the variance among people who "served in WWII" is orders-of-magnitude greater. There were just so many millions of people in uniform in so many diverse places.

RalfWausE 4y ago
I heard a similar story from a relative of me: He was in the Waffen SS and fought the war basically behind a typewriter in a depot.
- wongarsu 4y ago
  In WWII, "combat troops" made up only 20% of US military personnel, with the rest running support, logistics, etc. For the Germans it was closer to 60% for infantry and 50% for panzer divisions. So if you were drafted, even as a German you had a nearly 50% chance to be assigned a position where you weren't expected to see combat. And on top of that there's the combat troops defending targets that weren't attacked by the enemy. But with some bad luck you might have ended up fighting at Stalingrad. War isn't fair, on so many levels. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tooth-to-tail_ratio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tooth-to-tail_ratio

eyelidlessness 4y ago

pram 4y ago
Yes I really regret personally starting the war now, thanks.
- eyelidlessness 4y ago
  Yo, you laughed about how bored you were because it was so uneventful. It was uneventful for you. I’m not blaming you for the wars, but I do think some perspective on how they affected others is warranted.
  - kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 4y ago
    And you know they don't have a good perspective on this how exactly? Judge not, lest ye be judged
    - eyelidlessness 4y ago
  - pram 4y ago
    I’m frankly shocked you can’t comprehend that there could be a difference between my personal experience and overall opinion and perspective of the war. Yes it was an absolutely pointless monumental disaster with incredible suffering. No shit.
    - eyelidlessness 4y ago
      Look. I wouldn’t have said a thing about it if you didn’t laugh about being bored by the routine suffering of others. Maybe you have more to talk about than you think?
      - 4y ago

seanmcdirmid 4y ago

Whenever I asked my dad about his time in Vietnam, he said something similar, but less comfortable (sleeping in a hot humid bungalow with no AC and lots of rats). I wished I dug a bit deeper.

_0w8t 4y ago

My grandfather was a partisan in Belarus during WWII. He told a few real battle/fight stories. But those stories can fill like 1% of the time. He rarely talked about the 99% he spent surviving in forests and swamps. And when he talked it was mostly about skills like sleeping in a forest when it was -30…