The following written by gruntpain1775 (posted with his permission).
This Forum is a place where like minded individuals get together and talk about our expeirances in the infantry world, help each other out, pass along information. When people get on here and ask questions We have no problem helping them out. HOWEVER, when you start coming in here and try to overstep your bounds we have a problem. Granted this is the internet, but our bonds as brothers in arms go beyond a computer. Ours is a world filled with great pain, joys, happiness, tears, blood, the list can go on. Everyone wants to be like us but they are not prepared to make the sacrifice to be one of us. What is that sacrifice? here are just a few. Spending countless DAYS without food, sleep calling home to see if your pregnant wife or sick mom are doing ok, pushing your body to the point your brain has to take over and from then on you don't remember half the **** you did, months in the field, years in a combat zone, spending 15 months or more woundering if today will be your last day, trying to imagine how you will die, if it will hurt. watching your buddy be cut in half from a IED and having to drag him out of the kill zone or having a bullet bounce off your shoulder after it just went thru your buddies head. and after that is done having to go back to the hooch and clean his bloody gear and pack his things to send send home to his wife. Then having to grab your gear and go right back out.
You don't know about those things because you have spent you life in school, getting high, getting drunk trying to figure out if you can get into susie rotten crotches panties tonight, wondering if those new pair of shoes you got today will look cool with your new jeans and when the next HALO game will come out. You want to look cool and get as many "titles" under your belt so one day you can have people say "wow, he is such a hero, he has done X,Y and Z while he was in the military." well guess what, you get those titles, tell your "war" stories you want so bad. Rest assured that one day you will tell those stories and somwhere in that group of people you are telling those stories too will be that guy. The one who sits in the back. He doesn't hardly talk, not to many people know him, and even less people know what he has done. he will be that guy who landed on Normandy. He will be that guy that marched across the frozen ground in Korea. He will be that guy who slept in the enemies back yard in the jungles of Veit nam. He will be that guy who Liberated Kuwait, he will be that guy who who fought in Iraq, he will be that guy that climbed the mountains of Afganistan. He once wore a blue cord. The color of his headgear might have been green, tan, black. He watched his buddies die and everyday he wonders why it wasn't him. Everynight his wife wakes up and looks over and sees him reliving that fight from that far away land and she tries to wake him up, and while she is trying that she has one foot one the ground ready to jump back when she wakes him up because she don't know if he will try to hurt her. He is that guy that can't go hunting anymore with his kids because if he is in the woods and he hears a shot he is back there again. He is that guy that can't drive down the road without wondering if that bag of trash is an IED on the Intersate in AMERICA. He is your doctor, your lawyer, the cop who patrols your street, the next door neighbor who never really comes out of his house, he is the kid at the super market bagging your chow, he is the guy building your house. He is everywhere. and you would never know it because is a professional. He has lived things that you can't even imagine. He has done andseen what Hollywood can never capture on the silver screen. And the reason why you would never know about him is because he don't care about "titles". He knows that even if he tried to talk to you about what he has done you are to stupid to understand. He has been there done that and the only people who he can talk to about the things he has done are the people who have done it themselves. The Infantry is a small community. It does not matter if they served in WWII or Iraq they share a common bond that only we can understand. We can talk openly, and even laugh, about things we have done with each other but our wifes would never know we did. Why? Because when it's all said and done we are the only ones who will understand.
There are only 2 types of people on this earth who hunt man and kill them. The first is a criminal and we try our best to keep them locked away, never to bother us again. the 2nd is an Infantryman, Army or Marine. And they try their best to keep us tucked away in bases far from "the better folk" of society. But when it is all said and done we are the ones who make sure that you wife isn't being raped at the will o soldiers from an invading army. We are the ones who have provided a place for your children to go to school and get one of the best educations in the world. we are the ones who have made it so you can be born the son of a farmer who can't pay to have running water in his home yet you grow up to be the President. We are the ones who "only join the military because they are un-educated criminals who can't make it in the real world" We are the ones they try so hard to shut away in the closet when the polite company come to visit but when the bad guy is knocking at their door they want us to answer it. We come from all walks of life. One guy in my company in Iraq was a freakin Medical Doctor. Not going to school to be one, he was a full fledged Doctor. E-4. Why? Because He wanted to serve his country, contribute to a cause GREATER THAN HIMSELF, H had a title. He didn't brag about it and it didn't make him a better soldier, citizen or anything else. I can attest this, He was a damn fine Infantryman. We don't do this job because we want a title. Matter of fact, I would be willing to best 99%of us wish we were out of a job, because we are the first ones to die when a war comes along. 99% of us would rather be doing something else, yet we choose to do this because we have a greater sense of being. We choose to serve a cause greater than ourselves. And thank god for that because if we left this job to people like you then one day I will be telling my grandchildrean what America was like.
Bottom line, if you want a "title" go be a damn lawyer or congressman or mayor or what ever it is that will satisfy your sense of selfworth. Whatever it is that will get you into the pants of susie and and whatever it is that will make you think your "friends" will suck you dick over. What ever it is stay the F*** away from my Army and My INFANTRY untill you figure out that you are willing to sacrifice beyond all possible human norms to live this under apreciated, seldom reconized, step child of america way of life. And remember when you do get those "titles" you want so badly, there is always an infantryman somewhere in that group you are talking to. And he still keeps in contact with other infantrymen (hence forums like this) an he will make you pay ever so dearly for utterring even the small lie.
