Predator by Rageaholic

Scott says:

I was not infantry. But here is what I recall from my two most recent deployments. (2011 and 2014). Upon arrival in theater, there is a sorting process that goes on, not exactly out in the open, but its pretty obvious. It does not matter if you are married, single, whatever.

Within the first, I would guess, two weeks, you receive signals of intention from the girls who are interested in having a one year (or however long your deployment is scheduled to be) temporary arrangement. If you have not paired up within that two weeks, you have made it clear that you are not going to take part in the year long mission that happens to break out during the bang-fest.

Everyone knows who is f&$#ing whom. It is not a secret. You can pull them aside and say “hey man, I thought you were married. What the f&%$ are you doing?” This will only brand you as totally NOT DOWN with the party and you will spend the rest of your deployment eating at the Kandahar Burger King by yourself. I didn’t really mind, because I still had my marriage intact.

Back home, the wives are getting pregnant, getting abortions or claiming they were raped (because of the inconvenient timing of the pregnancies). Mychael was a civilian nurse working at an on-post clinic while I was downrange and could tell some stories. She also got regularly hit on, even by officers in my chain of command when they found she was home alone while I was deployed.

The suicide rate climbs and continues to be correlated with infidelity, break ups, frivorce, etc and everyone keeps willfully and ignorantly pretending that what is needed are MORE mental health professionals and other attempts to attack the symptom, not the cause. If we shove online suicide prevention trainings down their throats, maybe THEN they will stop killing themselves!

People are f&%$ing animals. They will have sex in dirty, dusty conexes, behind latrines, INSIDE latrines, whatever. Huge portions of the military have a way bigger share of STDs then the general population. All the while, nobody ever thinks to ask, “maybe its the mixing of the two in this environment that is the issue.”