I recently EAS'd. I was a Comm guy in Oki and then spent my last 3 as an MSG. I was thinking of joining the reserves and go as an 03. Does anyone have any experience with a reserve infantry unit. I have never dealt with weekend warriorss but I regret not deploying to Iraq while I was active and I figure this would be my best shot. Does anyone know how rank works once you seperate and join the reserves?

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Originally posted by 10230631:
I recently EAS'd. I was a Comm guy in Oki and then spent my last 3 as an MSG. I was thinking of joining the reserves and go as an 03. Does anyone have any experience with a reserve infantry unit. I have never dealt with weekend warriorss but I regret not deploying to Iraq while I was active and I figure this would be my best shot. Does anyone know how rank works once you seperate and join the reserves?

you keep your rank, even if you are latmoving

In terms of general quality of the unit, like everything else in the Marine Corps it varies by unit. Officers on the reserve side however are always an adventure namely since there is a massive shortage of company grade combat arms officers, especially for infantry. When reserve infantry battalions get deployed, almost all the officers are active duty augments and even then it doesn't always fill the shortage. You get a lot of captains, staff sergeants, and gunnies acting as platoon commanders.

Drill is probably the worst part of being a reserve grunt. This in particular depends a lot on unit I&I staff, the CO and the NCO's. To be blunt most drills are a waste of time. For every time you do patrolling, MOUT, livefire evolutions, squad tactics, etc, you have retarded pointless drills sitting through admin classes, getting lectured on alcohol awareness or some other crap, or just standing around doing absolutely nothing. The reason I cite NCO's is that if you have them (Good ones, that is), you can still get things accomplished. Get some rocks and a piece of paper and teach some guys out of SOI how to do call for fire, stuff like that. In the end though it's primarily the I&I and CO that determine what actual training venues you get. One time our I&I scheduled land nav for drill, we get there and they find out that the Army unit on base already reserved it the whole weekend. Result, stand around dipping and kicking classes to kill time for two days. That being said, the NCO's are generally pretty good, the side effect of reserve getting promoted glacially slow (Lcpl to Cpl especially) is that almost all of them have deployments under their belt. You get a lot of guys who work law enforcement in their civ jobs, guys who did time on active duty before going reserve, so there's always a wide range of experiences and knowledge going around. I am pretty sure every reserve infantry Bn has already deployed at least once during OIF and reserve contracts are for six years, so any of those units will still have a good core of Lcpls/NCO's with combat time.

I should also add that although I don't know the formal name for it (Or if it even has a name), there is a way for people freshly coming off active duty to try out drilling with a reserve unit with no contractual obligation. On our last deployment we had a Sgt who lived in the state and had just EAS'd from active duty who came to a couple drills and deployed with us but decided he didn't want to be in the reserve long term, and they let him go with no strings. I'm not sure if that involved him volunteering as an augment from IRR or what. Also, if you want specifically to deploy, there are ALWAYS slots for individual augments to deploying infantry Bn's...the only question is whether your own chain of command will allow it. The way things have been going, battalions are basically deploying 2 at a time due to undermanning issues. For instance one Bn will augment another with all its newjoins, previously nondeployed Marines, and volunteers, usually amounting to a couple hundred bodies, without being actually activated itself, then later on that Bn will be activated and the unit it previously augmented returns the favor.

Sounds like some things never change...

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Originally posted by Funkymustafa:
I should also add that although I don't know the formal name for it (Or if it even has a name), there is a way for people freshly coming off active duty to try out drilling with a reserve unit with no contractual obligation.

Was the term called "non-obligor" (not obligated)?

Could have been, the guy just disappeared after we came home and I found out the story from someone else.

Thanks fellas. I'll look into it. Good to hear about the rank thing. Wonder how many Cpl.'s and Sgt.'s go through SOI? Anyways, it sounds a lot better than this civilian life, because after 6 months of this crap I'm ready for another deployment.

"Standing around and dipping?" That never happens in the Corps...

If all you want is to deploy you might get it quicker by keeping a non infantry MOS. That will make it easier for you to get an IA billet, most infantry units deploy together and would be reluctant to let you go.

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Originally posted by HollywoodMarine:

quote:

Originally posted by Funkymustafa:
I should also add that although I don't know the formal name for it (Or if it even has a name), there is a way for people freshly coming off active duty to try out drilling with a reserve unit with no contractual obligation.

Was the term called "non-obligor" (not obligated)?

I think so,

I EAS and then joined E 2/24 and went to a few drills and hated it. the NCO's thought they knew everything.

The final straw was my last drill, we went to Ft McCoy, Ws to rifle qual(I got my 6th award expert) anyway, we got back around 11pm Sat and the CO made everyone stay up until 3:00am cleaning their rifle. Then up again cleaning weapons again at like 7:00am.

Now I was 4 months or so out of the fleet and as you know most grunts generally take apart their rifles more than their allowed to to clean them, which is what I did to mine and a few buddies.

When I turned it in the Sgt said nope not clean enough. I couldnt believe, that weapon was cleaner then it had ever been.

We were not relesed from that drill untill 11:00pm Sunday night.

I also asked for the next drill off as my fiance was the matron of honor in her college roomamtes wedding. The CO said no, So I said I was going anyway and it was nice knowing ya!!!

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Was the term called "non-obligor" (not obligated)?

That's it exactly. I was "non-obligated" when I joined the 4th AAV's. They were a pretty messed-up unit in the 4 months I gave them, so I simply found another unit that wanted me, checked out of 4 AAV's on one drill weekend and into the new unit on the next.

Do you get paid if you show up for drill as a non obligor?

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Originally posted by AHill_USMC:
Do you get paid if you show up for drill as a non obligor?

Hey man you doing ok?

Yes you get paid as a Non-Ob. I was Non-ob my whole time with 1/23....well until we got called up. Then I had to sign a one year active duty contract to go with them....but you get paid for every drill you go to Non-Ob or not!

oh and the best part...you can walk anytime....that alone made me stay longer.

Stay safe Bro. Do you need anything?

I did a stint on I&I duty with L 3/25 and found the reserves to be similar to the active duty side of the fence. There are standouts and there are the ten percent.

I was off active duty for the latter half of the 90s and drilled as a non 'ob. It was a great stress reliever and kept me in shape for my return in 2001.

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Originally posted by BootE5:
Yes you get paid as a Non-Ob. I was Non-ob my whole time with 1/23....well until we got called up. Then I had to sign a one year active duty contract to go with them....but you get paid for every drill you go to Non-Ob or not!

Did you have to be in IRR time from your AD contract to do reserve non-ob? I'd appreciate as much information about it as you can give, my buddy was in '02-06 and he is thinking about hooking up with a reserve grunt unit, but he doesn't want it to be obligatory.

Funky,

you have an IRR contract to drill, but with that you dont have to drill or even go if activated.

The way it worked at my unit was you got on IRR, and you were drilling. However you couldnt bounce back and forth. I mean you didnt get to pick your weekends or when you just wanted to come to drill. If you had a problem and had to lay out for say 4 - 6 months you could check out, stop drilling, then come back after things calmed down for you. But they would let you come this month lay off the next, then come the month after.

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Did you have to be in IRR time from your AD contract to do reserve non-ob?

It doesn't have to be the IRR time from your original AD contract, but you do have to be "under contract" in some way (i.e. in the IRR). At one point, they made me re-enlist in the IRR so that I was still "under contract."

Whether you're non-obligated or otherwise, you get paid whenever you drill. If I remember correctly, they used to pay IRR Marines just for showing up once a year and updating your record of emergency data (like $40.00 bucks or something). I'd imagine they do that online nowadays.

If you're "obligated", on the other hand, you do whatever they tell you to do, so it really doesn't matter .

Sorry to intrude into your forum but I am familiar with this topic. You are NON-OB after you have completed your initial amount of obligated service. When you completed 4 years on your active contract you are in the IRR for 4 years and considered non-ob. if your initial contract was in the reserves you have to serve 6 years obligated then 2 years IRR non-ob. Now you can be recalled while in the IRR even if you are non-ob because the IRR part of it is obligated. You can drill with a reserve unit for a weekend to see if it is what you are looking for. This is called a courtesy drill. But if you want to go any further then you must check into that unit as a member. You can check out if you are non-ob when you like but some units make it mandatory to request that. Just to prevent any rash decisions.

Refer MOL to see your EOS (end of obligated service)for your date.

Well I think I'm going to go the non-ob route. 1/25 has rifle companies all over where I live. Thanks guys.

You are able to reenlist into the IRR, by the way. I did this twice in the 90s to be able to continue drilling as a non ob.