Take your own advice, Dustin. I'll comment as I see fit, based on my experience. A whole lot of people in the Guard and the Reserve were "in the shit" before you were even born. Like WWII. The unit I joined--1/133d Infantry (Iron Man) was one such. If you really knew your military history, you'd know that. More days in combat than, I believe, any Active unit during the war. A Guard tank battalion from MN covered the retreat to Bataan. They'd been in the Philippines for almost a year before the Japanese invaded. Just a couple of examples. The fact that the Pentagon determined not to send the Guard and Reserve to Vietnam was no fault of those of us who enlisted--like I did--when there was only a relative handful of advisers "in country".
After completing my 6 years, I put myself in the position of being sent to Vietnam yet again by joining CIA and getting my ticket punched as an operations officer. Instead, I was selected for an assignment in North Africa . . . while Black September was quite active. Took a couple abortive attempts against us as well, and a bit later killed American diplomats in Sudan. I'm pretty sure you're too young to have missed those earlier generation terrorists. And when it came time to engage Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan, it was CIA case officers who put boots on the ground weeks before even the Special Operations guys arrived. And in Benghazi, it was CIA that saved all those at the State compound who survived the initial attack.
And it apparently never crossed your grunt mind that the role of intelligence--where I did most of my Reserve time post-CIA--was to keep you guys from getting killed. You might want to google the battle of Kolwezi. I was a newly-minted CPT, happened to be in DC supporting our Active counterparts in the Army's Intelligence and Threat Analysis Center (USAITAC). Came time to send someone down to Ft Bragg to brief the 82d Airborne G-2 . . . the Active ITAC branch chief picked me to do it, not one of his "regular" people. At that point, 82d had a battalion on alert getting ready to go. They liked the study and briefing I provided them on Zaire enough that for several months after that, our little Army Reserve MI Detachment out in Iowa City was getting direct requests from the 82d for similar information on other countries in Africa. That went on until people in the Pentagon--apparently with your attitude--didn't think it was right that a Reserve unit ought to be supporting the 82d. Seems to me maybe the 82d kept requesting studies from us because we got the job done, and they liked what we provided.
As for the 5% discount, I'm simply providing information for those veterans here not to expect the discount. Funny . . . I've heard from Active vets on other boards that they're going to reconsider where they shop. But then you probably think I don't deserve my pension and my Tricare For Life because I wasn't "down range" where and when you were. And because most of my time was in MI . . . which, given my CIA experience, seemed to me a case of the Army putting me where I could be of the most value. 82d seemed to agree. So I'll just file your opinion as being ill-informed. Guess you don't even realize that the vast majority of vets have never been shot at. And that some of us "REMFs" were working to make sure they weren't.
Last edited by L. Brown; 03/04/18 07:25 PM.
