I'm 27 now and my 28th birthday is in May of 08'
I'm married and have 3 kids; I'm trying to get in shape. Last year I was 260+lbs. and I've managed to get down to 220 and Hope to be with in the range needed, that’s fewer than 20% body fat, 15lbs should get me at 15% body fat I'm almost there! I just spoke with a recruiter and he did answer some of my questions, but in all honesty my biggest question is how much time can I expect to be away from my family I was told every 16mo. I'd be deployed for 4 and if I were to die serving what would my wife and children expect? I tossed the idea of joining the military for quite some time but never thought it was I could do! I have a feeling that this is for me, but until I try it I won’t know! I'm hoping that this will mean a career for me, something I can be proud of; something I can feel helped my country, something my wife and kids can be proud of! Don't me to ramble, just unsure of what to expect and would like some insight, thanks!

Hmmmm, keep up the lossing weight and trimming down that body fat percentage. Even if you don't enlist, you'll be healthier for it.

The recruiter can't really say for sure about the deployed time factors. All that depends on the current need of the country and the Air Force. On average an Air Force enlisted might be deployed once every 16 months, for 4 to 6 months at a time, or one could get deployed or get orders for unaccompanied tour for up to a year or move. Unaccompanied tour means the family stays home.

For the record, car wrecks kill more Air Force service members than combat does. Work related accidents are next. Suicides, and then combat related. Mind you this is the AIr Force we are talking about. If you enlist in other branch of service none of this applies.

First of, thanks for the reply! I heard that I would have to do a year tour as such in Korea or Guam I believe once in my career?! I know there is no grantees in life and surly none in the military! I just don't want to sacrifice my children and there joy for mine in a since. I know that sounds a little off, but I couldn't imagine being stuck in a really bad town for two years or how ever long it would be once were moved and having my kids having to start school again and meet new friends again, resenting that and me for the choice of joining the military. On the other hand if I'm only gone like you said 4-6 months at a time and it’s a nice 16mo. break then that would be expectable!

My dad was career Air Force, and the large majority of the time, we went where he went. Before I joined the Marine Corps, I had already been across the atlantic 19 times and across the pacific 6 times.

I lived in England, Scotland, Spain, Portugal, Germany, Belgium, Italy, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Japan, and Guam. While in the states, I lived in North Carolina, Tenneessee, New Jersey, New York, Kansas, Colorado, Georgia, California, Nevada, New Mexico.

All of the above was before I joined the Marines and served 20 years.

It will really depend on the type of job you get and the needs of the service on the frequency and length of your tours.

Its great when you can take your family, but it can also be really hard on them growing up in all those places. I've met so many people in my life, but never really was able to develop any lifelong friends due to all the moving. I missed thst part of life that most take for granted. I also missed growing up in one place and don't really have what I consider as a hometown.

Sounds like a hell of a journey! I couldn't imagine! I haven't taken my ASVABS yet; however if I was to join I'd like to do something technical. Computer programming or something to that effect. I heard being a cop is probably the job to stay away from... Every base needs a cop and there probably the closest to the action. I also have my associates and to get my BA to become a pilot would be too hard I'd imagine?! It's funny, I work with a guy, a cop now part time and he supplements his income with this gig here working security, we call him gunny. I can only assume you were a gunner too! Would you say much has changed since you got out, or is that presumptuous of me and your still in? Man, I wish I had a little more to go on, it feels like a gamble honestly! I know that my family would be taken care of if I were to die or need health care (at least I think I know that) as a civilian if I were to die now, they'd get nothing! I would be serving my country. I... I'm fearful, not for myself, but my kids with out a dad plays on and on in my head. It's enough to drive you mad! My buddy, Gunny, says I'm jerkin my mind off to much, ha.. I guess he's right! I feel like I'm in the middle of Iraq and a hard place! (Pun Intended)

I got out in 94. While I was in I held several different jobs, field radio operator for artillery battalion, rolls royce jet engine mechanic, and finally a database adminstrator instructor. I now work for the company that Ross Perot started called EDS. I'm currently working ona 9 billion dollar govt contract providing computers to all US Navy and Marine Bases nation wide and in the far east.


My advice is to check it out and if the service will provide you with what you need for both you and your family, then by all means go for it. Your buddy is right, don't get all wrapped around the axle over it. If your gut tells you that this is what you need to do then listen to yourself and go do it.

You very likely make life altering decisons everyday without realizing it, turn left, stop a little longer at a red light, roll through a stop sign, stomp on the gas when the light is yellow, gulp yer food and so on.

by the by, what does your wife have to say about all this?

Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Gunny you been holding out on me; what equipment did you service?

quote:

Gunny you been holding out on me; what equipment did you service?

I'm thinking:

My wife's thinking Better to be broke and together than broken apart! Funny thing is she's the one that called the recruiter, go figure! Gunny, do you have children? Are you married, and did you take them along with you?

I was married twice during my career. Step children with both. My first wife...well lets just say she was into creative financing. At the end, she took my 1800.00 paycheck and turned it into 20,000.00 by depositing small amounts in all the banks in town and then writing checks for whatever amounts she could get away with and split.... left me holding the tab. Took me another 10 years to be trusting enough to get seriously involved again.

Only took the family to bases in the states as most of my deployments were onboard ship and such. Marines deploy a lot but are generally either permanently stationed in the states or on Okinawa, Hawaii or Japan. We don't have Marine bases in Europe.

I was in Beirut when a truck came through the front door in 1983 at the airport which introduced America to reality in the middle east. During my stay in Beirut I was the radio operator that helped direct the fire from the battleship New Jersey when it removed the top of a mountain with a barrage from its 16 inch guns. During Desert Shield/Storm, I was on the ground in Saudi Arabia on August 22nd 1990, twenty miles from Kuwait. One of the first Marines there after Saddam invaded Kuwait on August 12th.

Came back and married my current wife on April 3rd 1991. (also happens to be her birthday)

I have serviced and fired every weapon in the Marine Corps from 155mm howitzer on down. I could and did write my name in the sky with 155mm illumination rounds, along with select cuss words. While I was in artillery, my own buddies dropped a 155mm round thirty feet behind me and put me in the hospital. Had shrapnel in my back, blew both my eardrums out, and displaced my right eye from its socket. The thing that saved my eye was that I was wearing my eyeglasses with that ridiculous black strap to keep my glasses on. The doc told me that essentially saved my eyesight. Turned out that my buddies had smoked their lunch that day and didn’t put enough powder charges in the round. I could place a 40mm grenade with an M203 into an open turrent of a tank at 250 yards. I fired high expert 7 consecutive times on both rifle and pistol. I was a tactical vehicle driving instructor for everything from the Dragon Wagon on down. If it had wheels, I taught it. I have assaulted beaches from AMTRACS during numerous military exercises, and been helo lifted from mountain tops with Force Recon Marines.

I was in the redline brig once, and had total of 4 Non-Judicial Punishments, but never lost a stripe. The brig time was for striking an Officer. He deserved it, I really enjoyed it and I subsequently paid for it. I finally had enough of humping a field radio so I re-enlisted into the airwing.

I worked on A-4, A-6, F-4, AV8’s during my time in Marine Aviation. I performed a variety of jobs to include complete engine repair, engine removal and reinstallation, low and high power turn up. Got pretty good at it and could fine tune an engine so that there was a noticeable improvement to the pilots. I was inside the hanger in Cherry Point when a AV8 Harrier turned turtle out on the hover pad and killed its pilot, but the jet itself was still running at full power when it came through the hanger. It was by then just the fuselage and it was moving about 200mph and was on fire. Missed me by about 10 feet. The hanger doors were both closed and it went through both sets of doors. It eventually landed on 15 cars and 5 motorcycles. The pilot was the only fatality.

Another jet augered into a doctors backyard from 30,000 feet. We had to stop digging after reaching 45 feet down. We did recover most of that pilot.

I also watched an F-4 performing gun runs on the USS Tarawa once off the coast of California, and he was so low, his wingtip clipped a wave and they spun into the ocean. By the time we got a boat out to the wreck site, the sharks got there first. Wasn’t much to recover of that flight crew.
I have witnessed a jet launch off the front of the carrier, but didn’t make it. It kind of dribbled off the front of the boat. The pilot ejected just as the nose of the aircraft hit the water, so he punched though all those waves with his ejection seat. So there he is just barely floating in the water when the ship comes along and runs over the aircraft as its sinking, then proceeds to run right over the top of the pilot. The pilot went under the entire length of the ship and we were able to recover him. He was pretty messed up but alive. He told me that he distinctly remembers those propeller blades whooshing right by him as he passed though the blades.

I also served as Plane Captain at the squadrons as well as being the Line Chief. I have had a canopy explode as I closed it to start up the jet. These canopies have explosive det cords in them so that when a pilot does eject, he goes through the canopy. I had a pilot come back from a mission and eject himself inadvertently on the flight line as he was climbing out of the jet. I was standing right next to him when that happened. He was our Group CO.

My last assignment was to a command called Space Warfare Command or SPAWAR for short. This was my last three years. I showed up at that command and when I checked in the Sgt Major looked at me and my record, and then make the sign of the cross in front of me, and muttered….domini, domini, domini, you are now a database administrator instructor. So began my last duty station in the Corps. This posting eventually lead to my current civilian job with a company called EDS. And here I am today back sitting on a Marine Corps Air Station where I spent a large majority of my time.

So there’s a condensed version of my time as a Marine Corps Gunnery Sargeant.

The one thing you can count on is that the needs of the military come before family. The military does not hold the family in very high regard. Also the air force can be deployed into army type positions (guarding gates, traveling on convoys where you are exposed to IED's, etc). This whole war on terror is a whole bunch or nonsence that you dont want to get wrapped up into. When the politicians and the military can start learning how to fight a war again and get there priorities straight it might be different but I dont ever see that happening the last time we fought a war correctly was WW2, unfortunatly so did the germans and japenesse. You need to listen to Michael Savage for a while and learn what is really going on and what should be done that is not happening, 650 am radio. Your wife is correct, she probably called the recruiter assuming he would be truthfull, but what really happens is the recruiters embelish the bennies and omit the very negitive aspects of the military, they sugar coat as much as they can without "lieing" of course omision of truth is the same thing as lieing but they dont see it that way.

check the records....when was the last time an NON-EOD AIR FORCE service member was involved in an IED incident, much less exposed to one? To date the ONLY Air Force service members that get close to IED's are those working in EOD.

That’s a hell of a condensation of time served! Thanks for all your help guys; I honestly didn't expect all the replies! I've got some time to ponder this, I still need to meet the weight requirements and I believe that will give me till January! Keep the post alive! I'll be checking in and writing in from time to time! Thanks again guys!

he, he, sorry I kinda ran on an on, but what other job in the world would give you those types of experiences? None that I know of or heard of in the civie world.

Engineering the stuff the military uses would probably entail similar experences probably with out the death part though.

yeah right...engineers live such exciting lives! Let us know in 20 years whether or not you get to have any of those experiences I wrote about.

I got to do a compressible fluid flow finite element calculation about a month ago, that was pretty exciting. Im also almost to thermodynamics section of my PE exam study and im getting ready to take an arctic engineering class for my PE to learn how to design things for arctic conditions (lessons learned, blowing snow and sub zero temperatures effects on equipment, etc). So its pretty exciting.

jet engine mechanic is equal to thermodynamic propulsion engineer

Damn, Gunny!!

domini, domini, domini.. is right!.. how come you haven't sold the rights to your life to Hollywood?? [ Brad Pitt or George Clooney as you? ]you'd be able to retire a king! got to be at least a novella worthy of Soldier of fortune in that tale !!

makes my time in the service seem good only for the ' humour in uniform' section of Readers' Digest [ par for the course for occifer types, mind ]

Believe it or not, my career doesn't really stand out as anything special. Those are just some of the events that a typical Marine lives through and with during twenty years. Only real difference is most Marines don't bother to jot it down for others to read about. I left out the really cool stuff.....