I'm a submariner. I'm a member of the VFW and the American Legion. I've been places I shouldn't have and done things straight out of a Tom Clancy novel.
But I'll NEVER claim I'm a combat vet. EVER.
And nads, seriously, you want to see scary? Try the VD lecture we got in bootcamp. That was enough to turn me off solid food for days, especially when the REAL "combat vet" FMF Master Chief Hospital Corpsman giving the lecture said, "WHO WANTS BLUEBERRY PIE?" and flipped on the junk of a guy with full-blown syphillis. Made Blue Waffle look tame.
We only had 4 weeks I think rotation in school at the public health in Norfork, over 30 years ago so times are a blur. I do not know what traumatised me more that or the rotation to a mental health in patient
lock down. The mental health scared me half to death, I was the oldest in my class late 20's and the young class mates took everything in stride, ME, I do not do well around the mentally ill, I just want to run away from them.
Sparky is oh so correct about the VD films, we must have seen a dozen or more and it was all amazing until I saw living humans with close to the same stuff, none as bad but getting there.
Back then 30 + years ago we had some woman in their 80's with Demetria from syphilis gone to the brain caught from husbands that came home from WW1 in Europe.
Combat zone, Yeah me too, I have seen my share of bar fights, had a neighbor go nuts and shoot at the police, I took the kids into the cellar and waited for an all clear. I was so by Nads formula in quite a few combat zones.
So was EX hubby, 1961 riding a diesel brought a group of armed men and dropped them off Taiwan, 15 years later he got a ribbon as they were chased by the Chinese and had a difficult time getting out of the area. The rest of his combat experience was getting away from the Pimps at the whore houses over seas.
So Nads and I have something in common we both survived Combat, her husband however who earned his Dolphins on a Nuke Boat, even if his boat became involved in playing chicken with a foreign boat, this was not combat, this was just games the Subs play. EX had he lived would be 73 today, old sea dog.
