operationforwardpass.com

The big myth of military life: “You have to dress, act and think the same. You do what you’re told and are never able to think for yourself.”

I have a one word response: Bullocks!

The reailty of military life: There are many basic concepts of operation, that have been figured out by many who have gone before us. The basics of warfighting boil down to killing the other guys and breaking their things so they can’t kill you and the people you protect, or can they break your things…simple? Yes, it is. Therefore, all the seemingly mindless training you experieince in the initial stages of your entry into the service are about teaching you the wisdom of the ages for fighting wars and taking it from the realm of conscious decision making, to smoothly executed subconscious responses. Those things they want you ro absorb into you are not just for the fun of toruring you, but to save your life and the lives of those around you, when the bullets are flying at thousands of feet per second. The brain is an incredible creation, but conscious decision making is a relatively slow process, while reactions straight from the subconscious speed through the system rapidly.

I blogged before on the value of learning from someone else’s mistakes here.
The foundation of these reactions, or group think, or a Borg like hive mind, if you prefer, are to make you survive. Many are counterintuitve to how you would solve a problem, but then you haven’t been in that condition named combat, but those training you have had the experieince to help you bring these reactions into your system.

For your friends and future employers, “concerned” that you have become a non-thinking individual, with your springs all wound tight, ready to expolde emotionally and do bad things at any unplanned moment, I’ll say this: Your training is to elict responses under certain conditions, and not just as you walk from your cubicle to the restroom and someone calls out to you. They are designed for the ultimate conflict, and I’d hope, unless you go to work for Blackwater Security, you’ll not have much of a probability of being presented with the circumstances that will cause you to react. In the case of the Blackwater folks, they will welcome you into their company, if, and only if, those reactions are truly refined to being very subconscious capabilities.

Now, what your friends, family, employers and co-workers should know is you have the ability to subconsciously react to serious “out of the box” conditions, which they would call emergencies. You will most likely keep your calm, cool head on, and quickly react to make the most people safe when one of those moments come. Be it a fire, a flood, a tornado, a car accident, a kid who has fallen off the roof and is laying in the flower bed with a compound fracture to his femur, or a disgruntled employee, who shows up at the office with a weapon and evil intent, it is you who will come forward with your “monolithic, hive mind” mentaility and take charge, issue orders and jump in and do your part. They will be all at once, be grateful and amazed, at what you did, and you will most likely not even realize, until the emergency is past, what you did. At that point, you will be amazed.

Let me ask this question: Who wouldn’t want you around, for just such times as those?

Next. Once they have successfully taken your entire group to the basic or warfighting skills, having firmly entrenched them in your young minds, then they will begin to seek and develop the inherent individual skill sets you have. From a purley logical standpoint, if the reality is all of the military members have to think and act the same, why is it the recruiter gives you a battery of tests, then sits down with you to tell you which skills you are best at, and then (hopefully) gives you the choices of the open fields you will be trained for, once your indoctrination is complete? You got it. We need people of all types of skills to make the military function. Upon completion of basic training, some people will become snipers, some welders, some logistics experts and some lucky few will get to head towards playing with live ordnance, specifically the kind the bad guys like to leave around with the plan to hurt passers by, or major industrial facilities, but I digress.

As you spend time in the ranks, you will see how what you can add to the unit is sought after and developed. Word of cuation: Just because you are good at something, it doesn’t mean you will get to do it. They may be too many people already in the specialty, so relax and look for the next best thing. On the other hand, it may be more important that you stay where you are, so that unit is intact.

Relax and look for your niche. Ask about it once you have learned the initial ropes of the system.

Taco of the blog SandGram, a USMC Helo KC-130 pilot (correction due to my misunderstanding of his type A/C), when he’s not flying for American, has begun posting about his entry into the Corps via Officer Candidate School (OCS).

Here’s a bit of wisdom for those of you joining the service, which Taco stole from “The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai:” Remember… where ever you go, there you are.

Here are his posts so far:

Marines

DyyyynnnnoooooMIGHT!!!!!!

and

Save Your Mommy, Kill a Commie.

In the third post, pay particular attention to the part of the story about a guy who couldn’t get his hair cut the first day. There is a huge lesson there.

This, of course, put Anders on the skyline (walking on the skyline allows the enemy to see you and pick you off easily) who, to add insult to injury, couldn’t march to save his life. I have to admit, it’s hard enough to do all the drill, but at least I was behind a prior enlisted guy and could see what his movements were, whereas Anders was all on his own.

Try not to stick out, at least at first would be the takeaway here.

Short and too the point – Here is the primarly anchor point for those days/momnets when you’re feeling realy abused by the “authority figures” in any indoctrination system of the Military:

They want you to succeed.

When the level of decibels in your ear seem to exceed that of a wild rock concert, and the noise contains words that refer to your lineage, or some attiribute you wished they hadn’t noticed, just know this:

It is in their best interests that you make it.

Once you get that part, don’t crack an outward smile, but find some humor in the circumstances. Think about it. The recruiters are the first line of defense. They should only be going after the ones who have a reasonable chance of success. We may enjoy telling horror stories we attribute to lazy/bad recruiters, but, as in any other filed, there are a few bad ones, and a lot of great ones no one ever comments about.

The money spent to find you and get you to the point where your shoes are lined up on those yellow foot prints on the pavement is quite substantial. To put it in more understandable terms, you’d probably like to have had the money instead, but…that’s not how it’s turning out.

Sure, the DIs and Company Commanders are there to find those who can’t make it, but the majority of their time is being spent making sure the good ones make it. You are now the future, not only of the service, but for your instructors you now have. One day, you may be the one reporting in to relieve them at their rotation date. For the most part, they want a quality product taking over from them.

So lighten up and enjoy the time in indoc.

Thanks to Mudville Gazette for the Open Post.

Everything I hear tells me to get going on this. It’s time, IMHO, to begin the process of collecting stories, anecdotes, letters, emails, etc, to begin telling the next generation what to expect, how to make the grade, what to do when they are discouraged, and why not to think too much of their capabilites sometimes.

Here’s the post, asking for inputs, from the new and improved Chaotic Synaptic Activity:

In the “junior blog” a few days ago, I posted a proposal for pulling together lessons learned to be passed on to those who are getting ready to enter “the real world,” particularly those headed for entry into the service. I think it’s time to get to work.

If you’re not following this well, check the post on the archives to see if that helps fill in the understanding gaps.

I have set up a rough cut blog for the purpose of posting articles or links to widom gathers from the “Old (fill in your name or nickname for your branch of service here)” and to collect them in a sinlge places for others to come along and peruse them.

http://operationforwardpass.wordpress.com is the place I decided to launch from, and then it may grow to it’s own domain from there. It will take a few hours for the domain name to go through, and then I’ll connect the dots and make it viable for use. The first cut will be cave-man basic, but functional.

If you have stories, emails, letters, etc, etc, etc, that helped you survive your “re-education process, please submit it to me, either by a link, or as the text you’d like shared.

I’m going to work off the premise the general topic areas will fall into a few main areas:

• Boot Camp
• Officer Indoctrination
• Officer Commissioning (Academies, ROTC, OCS)

I’m looking forward to reading the collected wisdom and enthused that the ‘net gives us a vehicle to keep it from being lost for all time. If you can recall the purveyor of the wisdom, please pass that along and I’ll make sure it’s highlighted to honor that person’s contribution to the military members who followed them.

Questions? Email, or post comments here….

Inputs welcomed. Tag them with where you got them from, and the circumstances you may have been in, which may help those reading it see how it can help them.

Quite simply, the intent of this blog is to be a collection point for “lessons learned” from those who have served in or around the military, including family members, so that others who come behind them might have gained the wisdom of others for their own journey.

I began thinking of this about two weeks ago, and wrote a post on my regular blog outlining it in more detail:

This post has been in the mental crock pot for a few days now. While checking my sitemeter log, I saw a hit from Instapinch, a blog of a former Naval Aviator, so I chased it. His post on graduation from college and heading to the cradle of Naval Aviation for AOCS has motivated me to finish it and ask the rest of you to tossing your stuff into the pool of knowledge for the soon to be graduates in our country.
In the weapons world, with one weapon system in particular I worked with, the future plan was to have the ability to fire the weapon from sea, and a forward observer, usually in an aircraft, could take control and “tweak” the flight path. The capability would be called “forward pass.” I see this concept outlined below as a similar capability. Stick with me and read the post.
In my MilBlogging Conference AAR – Part II, I spent a few minutes drafting the types of military bloggers that are developing. In the case of the active duty and veteran MilBlogs, I see an opportunity I’d like you (in those two categories) to consider as we are coming up to graduation for not only high school, but also the service academies and the many colleges and universities that have ROTC departments.
And I can hear it now: “And your point is?”
Do you have any good advice for the soon to be military members, both enlisted and officer? Was there a particular “mentor” you had that gave you the best piece of advice you ever heard to help you transition into the military and you found out, by the test of time, that it was wisdom suitable for mention to those who will don the uniform behind us? Do you have antecdotes, “sea stories” or the like, that will provide some valuable insight? Your stories, posted for the next genration of warriors, is hereby dubbed “Operation Forward Pass.”
Have you already taken the time to provide same to some family friend, young workmate, or relative, that you could share with the blogsphere?
If you have a well read blog, yet have no stories to pass on, but have a target audience of those who are coming up on joining, you could link to the posts that come up on other blogs? I think this would be a great topic area for blogs written by family members of current military personnel, for they most likely are already attracting a readership of parents and spouses of soon to be military members. The extention of the stories through these blogs would greatly expand the “max effective range” of such knowledge.
In the couple of years I’ve been reading blogs, there have been several powerfully written posts such as this, sometimes taken from email, or letters of others kind enough to send them to a blogger. There may be enough wisdom already written to quickly do a summary post of a blogs posts, linking to the good stuff used already.
There have been a few DEPers out there blogging, and they have gotten some great inputs from others. I recall last year, a USMA Cadet had a blog up, and there was lots of good stuff sent his way.
If you’re a DEPer, or ROTC/Academy type and blogging, you could certainly share the advice you’re received as you approach the day you will raise your right hand and swear to defend The Constitution.
Take a minute, consider the wisdom you have gained with regard to your entry into the profession of arms, and see if it’s fit to recycle for the next generation. Who knows what the max effective range of your blog is…it just might turn out to be several generations…
So, what do you think? Should we begin “OFP” now? Do we need a sidebar graphic for those particpating by posting their own stories, and those who will “autocat” them? There has got to be tomes of valuable insight awaiting those who need it, in specific and generic terms.
Not only will the information alone be useful, but it will give you a chance to honor the person who took the time to help you “assimilate.” To provide proper attibution will give you a public forum to thank them and to let them know, or those who google them up, that they had an impact in someone’s life.
I ask you to step up and share the pieces of discrete knowledge you have.

So, there you have the foundational thought for the record. I’ll think about a few major categories, but if you have suggestions, please pass them along…and any ideas, lets put them to work.

Just getting it rolling tonight. Standby for changes and updates.

Thanks to Mudville Gazette for the Open Post.

Operation Forward Pass is all about helping new service members transition from civilian life to the new career they have chosen.

In addition, it should be a great place to honor those who gave sound advice to those of us who served.

Please “recycle” the wisdom that works….