RESPECT
To gen131: This is a good scene. It reminds me of my old days in the USAF. This link was forwarded to me from a guy who is a retired US Navy Finance Officer.
Well, now that I am a little bit older and have some bugs on my teeth traveling through life, I have to agree with your take on discipline.
When I was young and a skull full of mush, I did not have much of a clue. As time has passed and I can look back on my time in service, I would not trade it for anything in the world. At the time, it seemed to not be the case, but it is true. There is nothing like comradery and team spirit/cohesion. I have never ever have found it since with any place I have worked. So my hats off to the folks who are willing to stick it out and put up with the juveniles.
Dispite the comments to one another, this is stuff that you will take with you for the rest of your life. I can not tell you how many great people who I have met that have served in different branches from WWII forward and the stories they have shared. NOTHING HAS CHANGED! Just the people and the calendar on the wall.
I have a friend who was volunteer SS from Deutschland. He was a volunteer at 15, yes Hitler youth, the whole nine yards. I have had the opportunity to even hold and read his files and some of specialty ceremonial daggers, etc.
He was a prisoner of war in the English Occupation. He told me stories of reality, showed me pictures of the truth of it over there, you youngsters should befriend some of these old guys, you could learn a lot more than the crap that they force feed you on TV or at school.
One really profound thing he told me was "All living creatures need three things, Food, Companionship & Shelter, and it is not always in that order either, nothing else, everything else is extra, in the regards to living and dying". VERY POWERFULL AND TRUE WORDS.
THINK ABOUT THEM.
His reply about WWII, "What a waste, brother against brother". He has a tremendous respect for life despite what folks want to think of the word "SS".
He was a soldier just like you and he was doing his job. He told me about the unit cohesion with the Officers and the Enlisted. They were tight, yet with discipline and respect for their grade. They ate, slept and died together. TEAM WORK.
He was in a group of youth that came out of basic at the end of the war. They asked for 300 volunteers for SS duty. His job was to destroy tanks. He was sent to Denmark. All of the rest went to the battle of Berlin. He knows of no survivors of that event in history.
He tells me stories of starvation after the war. There was the time he was crawling along in the gravel road bed of the railroad tracks looking for corn kernels in the full moonlight that fell off the cars just so he had something to eat. Eating anything that moved, cats, etc. Finding dead horses, etc and having to butcher them. You have no clue until you've been there. I know I haven't, but I can sure imagine. Things are a lot more fragile than you can know.
So, yes, when the crap is flyin' you better make sure you know whos got your back. It is better to be friends with mutual respect than to be something else. TEAM WORK, it is what it is all about and that is what makes the USAF great!
Thanks for reading my post. And for the folks who don't get it and want to respond with little thought, well, I am sorry that you can't be reached.
Weasel Keeper of GAFB - Ghosts of the Cold War
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