Comarderie, Discipline

We’re eight hundred feet above the ground, the plane is flying at a steady one hundred twenty knots, it’s noisy inside the C-17 Globemaster but I’m used to it. The jumpmaster is by the door looking at the ground below, waiting for the red light by the door to turn green. As I wait nervously for the light to change I look around the plane, think of all that I went through in my military career so far. The light turns green and we’re told to stand up and check our equipment. I realized that the army gave me experiences that a civilian job couldn’t. I experienced camaraderie, the discipline to make myself grow into a better person, and the personal courage I never knew I had.

Although some may not agree, I believe no one will experience true camaraderie like there is in the army. The army trains everyone from the day you enlist that everyone is part of a large family, which everyone needs to look out for one another and to take care of one another. For example, during our deployment to Iraq my company which had one hundred sixty soldiers was stationed in a COP (combat outpost), surrounded by an entire town of over two hundred thousand Iraqis. Our living quarters, we stacked eight soldiers per room, had to share the little electricity that we had, engage in almost daily firefights, see our friends wounded or killed, took turns burning our feces due to the lack of basic services, and at the end of the day we took the time to talk to each other, to find out if there were any problems, what our goals in life would be, how our families are doing, and so on. Who could not come out of this situation and not have the camaraderie like I did or in what civilian sector could you receive the same camaraderie?

Consider this, we all have flaws, nothing else points that out more than the army. The army forces us to look deep down and find those flaws; from there they teach us the discipline needed to right those flaws. Consider the problems I had, standing up for...