Cain:I'm pretty sure they did catch my back at the induction center, because after I got home my mom took me to a local specialist who explained the complication to us.Yes, BMT for the USAF. (I love saying that, reminds me of Good Morning Vietnam scene with all the initials). I signed a 6yr contract with them, and I went through MEPS and passed with flying colors.
How did they not catch your back at MEPS? MY godfather was drafted for Vietnam from college, but they didn't allow him to go cause he was color blind (no joke). I would think a back problem would be on the top lists. My uncle got honorable discharge for injuring his during Desert Storm.
I hated MEPS, it was the longest day of my entire life, but it wasn't all that bad. A bunch of bs about the food though. "Paid for by the US Government" and it was some of the crappiest eggs I've ever seen lol. The eggs where like fish nets with eggs in them.
As I recall at that time, the Navy, Air Force, and Coast Guard would discharge for conditions like mine while the Army and Marines would laugh.
About those eggs?
They were fish nets with yokes.
I blame Halliburton.
The worst eggs I've seen so far were at summer camp.
Some of the scrambled variety would actually bounce.
If you tossed those eggs toward the local squirrels, some squirrels would throw them back.
I hope you survive your tour without injuring any innocent humans including yourself.
Well, I am pretty sure I'll do fine in their. I do not PLAN to injure anyone, I will defend myself if attacked, and will follow my orders. I do not know what it will be like when I finally ship out, but war is a part of the military. Part of the world.
I'm including a link to a 72 page book (all online) written in the 1930s by one of the most decorate marines of all time. Major General Smedley Darlington Butler resigned from the Corps after WWI but not before winning the Congressional Medal of Honor... twice.
When Butler saw the clouds forming for WWII he wrote:
War is a Racket
It's a book I wish I had read at your age:
"WAR is a racket. It always has been.
It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious.
"It is the only one international in scope.
"It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.
"A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people.
"Only a small 'inside' group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many.
"Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.
"In the World War a mere handful garnered the profits of the conflict.
"At least 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires were made in the United States during the World War.
"That many admitted their huge blood gains in their income tax returns. How many other war millionaires falsified their tax returns no one knows.
"How many of these war millionaires shouldered a rifle? How many of them dug a trench?
"How many of them knew what it meant to go hungry in a rat-infested dug-out? How many of them spent sleepless, frightened nights, ducking shells and shrapnel and machine gun bullets?
"How many of them parried a bayonet thrust of an enemy?
"How many of them were wounded or killed in battle?
"Out of war nations acquire additional territory, if they are victorious.
"They just take it.
"This newly acquired territory promptly is exploited by the few – the selfsame few who wrung dollars out of blood in the war.
"The general public shoulders the bill."
I hope you survive the next six years with your humanity in tact.
Last edited: