how accurate are movie portrayals of the military?
Not at all accurate. For one thing, movies like to focus on officers as the main characters. Which is like a movie about a company focusing on the COO, CFO, CEO, etc. and claiming that’s representative of company life.
Most of the military is made up of enlisted members, which are the actual “employees” who do the hands-on work. Officers are like upper management. There’s not as many of them and they’re all in higher leadership positions, sending down orders to the enlisted.
Also, I was in the US Air Force as an enlisted guy, so my experiences may be very different from people who served in the Army, Marines, Navy, or the new Space Force.
Do higher officers yell at you all the time?
Nope. At least, not in the Air Force. We’re considered the “corporate branch,” because we tend to be much more relaxed than the other branches. It’s almost like working for a 9-to-5 business most of the time. I was an IT guy, fixing computers. So I had a desk job.
That said, the military training environment generally has a lot of yelling. Basic Training, which is the first program you go through, is intentionally meant to stress you out. Because if you can’t do your job with people yelling at you constantly, then you’re not a fit for military life.
In war, when shit hits the fan and people are dying, you need to keep your wits about you, or the mission will fail and everyone could die. So Basic Training only graduates people who can hold it together despite the stress and frustration. After that, the operational military life is pretty chill.
Do fellow soldiers harass you?
Asking this is like asking if people are harassed in a corporate environment. The answer is, it depends on where you work and who you work with. Most people are pretty cool, but there are bullies in every job and sometimes you end up being their target.
I personally experienced harassment in my service, in several different jobs. It was not a constant during my service, but it happens. As long as you know your job and follow regulations, usually it’s not that big of a deal. If it does become a problem, then you can go talk to your First Sergeant (the military’s version of HR) and your commander and come up with a solution.
Like I said, the Air Force was pretty chill, and the Navy is a pretty sweet gig too. The Army still abuses their members a lot, treating them like government resources instead of human beings. And it’s stuck in an infinite loop, where young guys are mistreated by the higher ranking folks, so when they go up in rank, they feel it’s their turn to abuse the next generation. And the abuse cycle keeps going.
The Marines are the worst, though. They’re brainwashed into loving the abuse. They’re taught to believe that if they’re not suffering, they’re not living up to their full potential, so they invite harsh conditions and celebrate rough experiences. Lots of mentally (and some physically) abusive conditions with those guys. I did not enjoy working with them. They were always trying to one-up each other over who survived the worst conditions in the field.
Personally, me as an Asian American, I’m terrified of the military, especially the discrimination aspects
During my service, I didn’t really notice much discrimination. We had annual training programs concerning racial discrimination, sexual harassment, religious tolerance, suicide awareness, etc., so it was beat into us to respect our fellow service members regardless of their background. I’m a white male though, so I understand that my privilege may have blinded me to some discrimination going on around me. But I served with a whole melting pot of cultures, genders, and religions, and it never appeared to be a problem.
I did have one Airman who grew up a poor black kid in the ghetto, and he admitted to hating anyone in a position of authority over him, as his local white cops regularly discriminated against black people in his neighborhood. He told me this right after I was appointed his boss. So I quickly learned to adjust my leadership style to accommodate him. He was one of those people who was highly productive until I spoke to him about anything, then he’d just shut down and be a problem for the rest of the day. So I learned to give him a task or two at the beginning of the day, then step back and let him do his thing and he would be my best performer in the office.
Shortly before I retired, I knew a black Technical Sergeant (rank E-6) who was about to retire. I thought it was cool that he qualified for retirement and I was excited for him to move on to the next big thing in his life. But he seemed kind of bummed about it.
I found out later that he had been a Master Sergeant (E-7), with an approved promotion to Senior Master Sergeant (E-8). But amongst his black friends, he told a black joke, and some white Navy guy overheard it and took offense. He was reported to his commander for racism (?!), who removed his promotion and then demoted him to Technical Sergeant. He didn’t have enough time left in service to promote again, so he was basically forced to retire as the lower rank.
Our current commander fought with his previous commander, trying to get him to reverse the demotion because it was destroying his career over a joke he made about his own race. But the former commander wouldn’t budge. Claimed he had a “zero-tolerance policy about racism.” Sounds to me like justification for his own racially-charged discrimination.
So because he told a joke about his own culture, amongst his own cultural peers, he lost two ranks, a bright future in the Air Force, and was forced to retire early. That’s probably the worst discrimination I’ve experienced during my service.
Did you ever get PTSD from it? Ever actually been in combat, or was it just during peacetime?
My entire service period was during wartime, and I did deploy to several combat zones. Suffice to say, I do have some PTSD from it. As a computer guy, and as an Air Force guy, I was never placed on the front lines of battle. But I was close enough to witness people dying, and even had a few close calls myself.
I signed up for the Air Force in my senior year of high school, in August 2001. Literally a month later… 9/11 happened. I was terrified I just signed up to go die in some foreign war and I seriously considered dropping my contract. But in the end, the benefits outweighed the negatives, and I knew the Air Force was a relatively safe branch to be in. We mostly just fly overhead and drop bombs; we don’t really go in boots-on-ground and fight. So I graduated high school in June 2002 and left for Basic Training 2 weeks later. I’ve never regretted the choice.
President Bush Jr. officially declared the “War on Terror,” designating 9/11 as the start of the war. That war ran until the year before I retired, when President Biden officially ended it. So my entire 20-yr service was literally one whole conflict.
Also, we throw around the term “war” a lot, but it’s only officially war if Congress declares it, and they haven’t declared a war since WWII. So officially, on government records, they’re known as military campaigns, not wars. For instance, I served in Iraq and was awarded an Iraq Campaign Medal. I never made it to Afghanistan, but people who served there got the Afghanistan Campaign Medal.
Outside of all this, my career was actually really great. I spent almost half of my career stationed overseas. I lived in Japan for 3 years, South Korea for 2 years, Germany for 2 years, several deployments to Hawaii, Africa, and Iraq, plus a few stateside assignments. And I always made an effort to travel and explore no matter where I was assigned. I saw most of Europe and parts of Asia and Africa. My wife and I took a Mediterranean cruise line for our honeymoon and visited a ton of countries bordering those seas. I got a chance to go to Australia to be the best man at a friend’s wedding, but I turned it down because I was a broke Airman at the time and couldn’t afford the plane tickets. It’s my one biggest regret in my career.
I retired at 38 years old and am now 41. I’m a bit beat up, both physically and mentally, and have a 100% disability rating from the VA, which gives me free medical and dental for life, plus a sizeable monthly pay that’s twice as much as my pension. My wife didn’t retire from the military, but she also got the 100% disability rating, so she gets the same pay and benefits as me. We’re both enjoying the quiet life in the countryside now. If I had the chance, I’d definitely do it all over again.
I will say, I’m thankful I retired when I did. I served under Trump the first time he was president and it was a nightmare for us. He pulled a lot of fascist shit, but was blocked left and right by the Democrat-majority government. This time, though, he has a Republican-majority government and immediately replaced everyone he could with unqualified loyalists, so our military is kind of a shitshow now.
I have a buddy whom I mentored shortly before I retired and he’s been messaging me, repeating a lot of lies about “Antifa is overthrowing state governments and the military needs to swoop in and take back our states!” He’s stationed overseas right now, but is terrified he’s going to be attacked by “liberal extremists” if he comes back to the US. I had to inform him that none of that is actually happening here in the US and he’s in more danger from ICE than any left-leaning civilians (he’s not white).
I have not heard of that. I’ll have to look into it.