Military Musician

My information is from the old days, but back in the time, a military musician was a soldier first, a musician second. I grew up near the US Air Force Academy and used to take lessons from a member of the Air Force Band there. It was very tough for a musician to make the cut for the band, and my teacher told me that he had served for a long time as a member of the regular Air Force before finally getting into the band. The Air Force Band played stuff pretty much like SM described. I went to hear my teacher perform in it once, and they were very, very good and he did a great solo of "Flight of the Bumblebee" on the flute. The band clowned around a little on that one, and his solo ended with another band member coming up and hitting him with a fly swatter! But the music was all very mainstream - mostly big band stuff, a bit of classical, and marches just like SM said.

You will win no favor with your fellow soldiers by refusing to return enemy fire, and you may well be endangering both their lives and your own by such a refusal. If you are a Buddhist and a pacifist, working for the military will go against your soul every day that you do it.

When you say "get out of school" do you mean high school or college? If I were you, I'd study to be a music teacher. There is an absolutely wonderful local rock band here made up entirely of music teachers. They are the top band in the area and draw huge turnouts at every venue they play. It seems to me that doing something like that would be more in line with your beleifs and also allow you to have a "day job" with your music.