I am Staff Sergeant Wanderer, United States Army

hooah!

I am (always) Sergeant Life Happens, United States Army.

I don't know what happened to you, George.

Your points are valid. are any of them the source of your discontent and or disillusionment with the Service? When you were counseled while being outprocessed (I'm guessing you are now discharged - but they can always call you back) what do you believe the interviewer derived from your responses to their uestions (sp - my keyboard is mussed)?

Perhaps you are simply providing advice to possible new recruits with this thread, but I think you want to give back a little pain to the source that provided you with unhappiness.

I also did not have a pleasant experience in the service, and it does have many problems.

If you are just looking for a way to hurt the Service branches by reminding people of their collective problems, let me assure you that problem has already been dealt with.

I wanted to let you know that american policy has already devised a way to work around short recruitment levels with the link to this article.

U.S. Contractors Outnumber Troops in Iraq

The number of U.S.-paid private contractors in Iraq now exceeds that of American combat troops by 20,000, newly released figures show, raising fresh questions about the privatization of the war effort and the government's capacity to carry out military and rebuilding campaigns....

http://www.drudge.com/news/96211/us-contractors-outnumber-troops-iraq

While soldiers die for pennies, private contractors (like Vice-President Dick Cheney's Halliburton) are making bank hand over fist with mercenaries at a higher cost to taxpayers.

While the Service branches are flawed, don't blame the Services, blame the leaders.

You will find that though it seems the Service (I don't know which branch you were in - I was active army) has abandoned you now that you are seemingly discharged, you will find support from the many good american civilians and, particularly, other former Servicemen - and women.

Good luck, and look forward.

at great risk of exposing myself to people i am trying to screw with a little, my wife is retired military and years after she retired, she came up with a weird thing. i won't go into it, but the army hospital referred her to the af doc, who referred her to three different doc's in three different states. just to get opinions.

they paid for all the travel, and all the civilian doc's to check her out. they paid for us to stay in a pretty nice hotel.
they even sent me with her, and paid for me to go too.
they cut military orders for me so i could go and hold her hand.

for all of that, and full coverage and free prescription drugs (for my wife its over 1800 smackers a month) plus a free emergency room for both of us and all the kids, we pay $420 a year. get that anywhere else.

plus a tax free retirement for a disability she suffered on the job while in the military, that fully pays our mortgage, and most of my truck payment.

for 9 years she served, and would happily go back to the air force today if they would let her. she was retired as an e-4, and they take great care of her, and our whole family.

if it wasn't for her service in the military, we couldn't live like we do. we are very lucky to have all that we do and we owe a lot of it to our military and our government.

by talking the way you do, you are the one using people, you are uninformed and a regurgitator. its sad.

my country serves me, and no matter what you say or think or do, no matter how much you cry, it serves you too.

Well my son whose served less than a year, in the AF, has had a medical procedure called PRK done at a cost of $0 to him. I'd say that's a pretty good perk. Gonna cost me, his mom at least $3,000 to do the same. His wife had a baby. Cost? $0.

KFC, I need a favor.  Can you email me at wan4u2 at yahoo dot com?  I need to ask you some questions about this.

Thanks

While all of your responses were well crafted, they were wasted on yet another habitual liar. This guy exists in NH and CA at the same time. He doesn't have a degree on his myspace page but he has two on another.

For someone who is supposed to be telling it like it is, you should Google yourself and find out just how many different ways you have told 'it'. And, if you are going to blatantly lie, don't use the same picture on diferent sites with diferent info.

It's even rumored that you are Elvis.

When you were in, I find it "very" doubtful that you were a moderate.  

They make it so easy. George Vreeland Hill... Wtih a full name like that you gotta by just a little bit bonkers from all the ass whippings you took by the school bully.

He must be a popular liar. He has like 11,000 MySpace friends.

My guess is that it's Sanjaya Malakar in his most recent recreation of himself.

"Oh I'll never be happy, no I'll never be free, til I done the Army like the Army done me!"

Your theme song George? :~D

Margo: Yeah, no one should be in the U.S. Military, you would love that wouldn't you. I wonder which freedoms you would enjoy losing first.

OF course, you and George would applaud and cheer the loss of many freedoms... until they started to effect yours... then you would whine like a stuck pig.

To add a little balance. When I left the marines I was a hurt puppy, the government refused to give me medical care because there was no documentation of my being wounded. It happens when you do stuff off the books. Three months later I get a call from a friend in the agency and he asks how I am doing and I tell him of my heart trouble. A month later I get a check in the mail. Suddenly I am in the VA system fully covered for my injuries and disability payments as well. The VA has treated me well and with respect. My buddy calls me up again I tell him what happened and he laughs. The last thing he said before he hung up was we take care of our own. Uncle Sam has been bery, bery good to me. He as never called me again.

you good sire, just got screwd. Try to find a way to help the situation, like maybe rtake a college course so you can get a better job. If you already have a good job and a college education then I will shut up because I did not know.

I served 28 years, my wife 22. Our son and daughter-in-law are almost at 8 years. Six of our seven kids were either born in military hospitals, or civilian hospitals courtesy of Champus (yes I am that old) or Tri-Care at no or very little cost to us. Our 6th child was born with severe birth defects, and spent almost the first 2 years of his life in and out of Children's Hospital, at no cost, including visiting nurse care. That service is now paying for 2 of our kids college education, and will cover the youngest 2 in the next 3 years. Our service son and daughter-in-law are attending Georgetown through the military. Our oldest 2 worked and we toughed it out to cover college for them since neither of us was retired yet, and benefits were'nt available then.

My wife is using her Vocational Rehab benefits to become a Nurse Practitioner. We have available to us, per our qualification through the VA:  VA Home Loan, Small Business Loan, Vocational Rehab Training, Home Improvement Loan, Disabled Vet Home Improvement Loan, Debt Consolidation Loan, and the GI Bill for school just to name a few. Oh, and let me not forget the Veteran's Preference for Government jobs,and Government Contractor jobs, that's emplying us both at present. Nevermind the almost 5k per month between us for the rest of our lives from our retired pensions and disability pensions. I am 51 and my wife is 44. We have a conventional mortgage on our home, but will probably use the VA Home Loan when we actually retire completely.

Granted, things such as the pension are only available to career retirees, but the vast majority are available to just about every honorably discharged veteran, usually after 4 years of service, (some only after 180 days of active duty!). You just have to get off your butt and go see the VA. Yes there is a lot of red tape and hassle, but the www has streamlined that from the bad old days.

Yes, serving is a risk. Wars kind of go with the job. At the risk of minimizing that risk, I see more people every day taking more risks, repeatedly, by talking on their cell phones on the highway.

So, yeah I guess they're not taking care of me, and I wouldn't encourage anyone to serve.

Edit: By the way, I've had stents put in my arteries, and my wife went through breast cancer, in and out of the military...little or no cost as well.