Consider my mistakes and experiences please.
I'm 26, father of a 2yo, married to a wife who isn't so keen on the idea.
So am I out of my mind?
I was online exploring different outdoor/survival "schools" mostly out of fantasy. I could never afford to go to a school like NOLs or BOSS. then lo and behold I stumble upon this
http://www.airforce.com/careers/detail/survival-evasion-resistance-and-escape-sere/ and Have been trying to dig up as much info as I can. I even gave the military my information *wife gasps* in an effort to gather more info.
I love bushcraft. I always have. I had always assumed that military survival instructors were always old salts, former pow's or retired special forces badass-rambo types. I had no Idea that they had a career track position... I wish I had found out about this when I was 18. anyways, it's been less than 24hrs and I'm making myself sick about it.
It wouldn't be such a difficult decision if I already had a career, but I'm in a time of transition anyway. community college full time, trying to explore my options. I was considering Environmental science, but my interests change frequently, there truly are too many possible outcomes.
I decided to post in the hopes that someone would either talk me down, convince me that this is truly a pipe dream. Or tell me to just do it. There must be people with military experience floating around here, please share your thoughts.
The short answer:
If I was married and had children, I would not join the military end of discussion.
If you care to read more, I’ll share with you my own life experience. I'm soon going to be 47, and this is what I've learned about the Military, a wife, and children I've fathered:
I joined the Marine Corps because I like shooting, blowing things up, and aircraft. I figured that there just had to be a job in there that I’d love. I couldn’t have been more wrong.
If the wife's against it, I wouldn't go in. I may not seem like she’s having much issue with it, or that she’ll deal with it like she’s dealt with other things, but it could break the marriage. I made a huge mistake of assuming that my wife would be ok with anything I did providing I wasn’t cheating on her or treating her bad. I was wrong, very wrong, and it cost me my marriage.
If you don't make sure to get a contract legally binding the military to honor your MOS of choice for your entire tour, I wouldn't join. I made that mistake myself. Since my GT score was rather high at 120 something out of a possible 150, the recruiter told me that I’d get a job that required smarts and I wouldn’t get stuck in the infantry. Well he was right, I didn’t get stuck in the infantry. I was one step above them in the artillery, but it’s what I consider being a mud Marine, and I wanted to go into the air wing not the mud Marines.
I would never subject my wife to men in the military. Since the military's made up of people from all walks of life, there are frequently large groups of brash rude men on military bases that are worse than construction workers. While it’s true that his goes on in the civilian world, it’s different because as a civilian, I can choose where I live and go with my family. In the military, I’m stuck where I am, and most military bases have large groups of crude men and a deficit of young attractive women...
I was never deployed anywhere. I never got to go on any floats either. This may sound like I was static and always main side, but I wasn’t. I was stationed at Camp Lejeune N.C. I went to Ft. Bragg twice a year. We just called them brags. Brags lasted at least four weeks, and I was in the field the entire time. We got phone calls once a week, but snail mail was our only line of communication with the outside. We went to 29 Palms California each summer, and it lasted three to four months, and communication with the outside world was via snail mail. Right there alone, I would have been away from the wife with her at home alone in a strange area with no friends or family for four or five months out of the year. I was frequently in the field at Camp Lejeune. I’d say that I spent at least 8 or 9 months of each year out in the field. I used to wonder why some men got married because they were out in the field away from their wives for months on end.
Divorce was very common as well as infidelities. In fact, while I was in, most of the men in my battery loved to hear about some unit getting deployed because they’d go to bars and e clubs near where the unit was stationed, and lo and behold, the bar was full of recently deployed “X” unit wives looking for some lovin’. Dragging wives along in the military puts the wife in a position where she feels isolated because she's hundreds and sometimes thousands of miles away from friends, family, and what she calls home. Now toss in the fact that you're away on a float, deployment, or in the field, it's no wonder why so many wives of military personnel stray. I'm not saying this will happen to you, but it could and it's something to consider. It was my experience that this was pretty common with men I was stationed with.
We’re in a war and have been for quite some time now. With our foreign policy, it looks like we’re going to be entangled in battles more in the future than we’ve been in the past. While you may never see actual combat, you will probably get stationed overseas in a combat area with a supporting unit for at least one year. For each airman/sailor/soldier/Marine in combat, there are more than ten personnel in support, so the chances are good for a lengthy tour overseas that will last at least one year. Most people I know that are your age and have been through the military, served two – three tours in Iraq and or Afghanistan. Most of them weren’t in infantry.
I don’t know what the military’s like today. When I got assigned to field artillery rather than the air wing, I thought, “Well, I like to machinegun, shoot, and blow junk up, so I guess it’s ok.” We never shot enough to offset the dull moments in my opinion. I cut a god-awful amount of battalion lawn, and scrubbed and cleaned more floors than a building maintenance man. My first year out of the Corps, I shot more machineguns and blew stuff up with the neighbor than my entire length of service in the Corps.
If I was married and the wife was against my joining the military, I would not join. Don’t take your wife and child for granted or mistakenly think that they’ll always be there for you because they won’t. Marriage is hard enough, the military will put a lot of new strains on your marriage that the civilian world won’t. While you’re gone, your wife is going to be alone. She’ll be stuck in an area with no friends or family hundreds if not thousands of miles away from what she calls home. If she’s against your being in the military, this could exacerbate her problems, and it could spell the beginning of the end of your marriage.
