The American Military Brit

Unknown Speaker 0:01
This is the American military Britt, shedding light on the realities of military life. Now, here's your host, US Air Force Staff Sergeant Christopher Clark.

Unknown Speaker 0:12
Hello, everyone, and welcome to the American military bread podcast. This is a podcast where we talk to different military members to figure out the full story about the military. And we don't just focus on the rumors such as the Marines being crazy, or the army being stupid, we actually figure out from the people themselves what the story is with the military. So I hope you enjoy this podcast that we have for you today. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to another outtake episode of the American military, Brit. And for this one yet, we've got some more good clips for you to listen to that were taken out of the various podcasts, the 10 podcasts that I had. And I'm going to begin with Tamiya Tamiya talks about why she joined the RMA. And like I said, we all have our different reasons. But one thing that I found interesting with her was, first of all, she didn't remember which was, which was quite funny. But it was also the fact that she thought it was just because of recruiting. And I just don't remember ever seeing any recruitment videos. I mean, obviously, I was in England and stuff like that. So I don't remember seeing anything from the British military or anything like that. But just in general, like recruitment had nothing to do with me joining. So I found this story very interesting. So yeah, here it is. One thing I am always curious about with my guests that I have on here is why you joined the the army, like why you join military service? Like Was there a specific moment because I know for me, it was just like, Okay, I was just kind of wasn't really going anywhere with my life. So I just thought, you know, let me just make a big change. But for you like, what was the reason you went to ROTC and the army?

Unknown Speaker 1:56
That's a deep question, actually. Because when, you know, I went on to tell you that I'm on the last or I joined the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department. And it's interesting, because like I said, My degree was in criminal justice. So how did I end up going to ROTC? I don't remember. It's kind of funny. I don't remember because I tell you what, huh. It might have been recruiting, you know, ROTC here on campus, because I actually got an ROTC pretty close to the beginning of, you know, I mean, I literally was four years ROTC. So I would imagine that they had some type of recruitment or something going on, where there was some, you know, uniformed officers that were, you know, talking to us when we were signing up, you know, coming through registration, that kind of stuff. Because it's, it's interesting, I can tell you the beginning of everything else that I've done, you know, how did you become a chaplain? How do you become a filmmaker? Why did you become a, you know, police officer, that when you see that, why did you join the service? And like, Hey, I don't know. Because, you know, my father was an Air Force officer, yet I never, like, saw my dad as an Air Force officer, you know, my dad was this, you know, great, corporate businessman, you know, so I didn't even know that he had done military service until I started thinking about ROTC and mentioned it to him. You know, when he was like, Well, you know, what, you know, I was in the Air Force when I'm like, you know, 16 years old, 17 years old, going, I didn't know that, you know, but I tell you what, I if I think back, I know what had to be part of my service. You know, my, because my whole life has this thread of service all the way through it. What's funny, when I tell people, I says, Yeah, I was a Girl Scout, you know, anything, you start with that? That's like the first level of service that you know, boy, Scout, Girl Scout, when someone's young, you know, and then when I was in high school, I was in Student Council, you know, I always was the person who wanted to be the champion of everybody. I wanted to be the person who would speak up when no one else would, you know, when everybody else is in the corner grumbling, I'm gonna, why don't you just go tell them? Let me go tell them, you know. So I think that military service is probably what, how I got convinced that that would be a good step for me, you know, to go into service for my community for my country. I'm a big patriot. You know, I've always been a patriot since I was a kid. You know, I love my country. You know, I love what the USA stands for, you know, so becoming a military service member. I'm sure once someone had that conversation with me seemed like a no brainer, because like I said, I did four years, you know, in ROTC, and not everybody does that, you know, some people might come in and then maybe three years, maybe two, you know, but I literally did it from the beginning. So I have to believe that it was probably someone recruiting me someone literally, you know, seeing me when I was going through admissions to come into the the university that said, Did you ever think about the army, you know?

Unknown Speaker 4:53
So I kind of want to go back on what I said earlier about, you know, recruitment had nothing to do with me joining because As my friend Sean actually told me about him, he wants to join the army. And that was the British Army and how Yeah, I should think about it. And yeah, you know, maybe join the Royal Air Force and all that stuff. So if you want to count that as recruitment, that did kind of have something to do with me joining. But speaking of Shawn, I'm actually going to have a clip here of Shawn peach in next and he talks about ECE do e in basic training. And that was so funny because he talks about how he would sleep and then the other guy would sleep and you'd rotate. And that's exactly what we would do as well. But then he gets into the fact that the whole like place the there was cameras everywhere, and the empty eyes could see everything. So I found that very interesting. But yeah, here's Shawn talking a little more about that story.

Unknown Speaker 5:48
And then I think the only other time that I really had anything that was interesting in basic training anyways was so as you remember, you used to have to do the door guard duty, right? Where you stay up. Yeah, you do those and like, yeah, basically, the door knocks you got to slide that thing, you got to have them present the ID card, then you got to be like checking one common access card Staff Sergeant, you know, whatever the guy's name is, and then you got to look at your entry list and be like, can I kind of let this guy in because if you let him in without check in, he's gonna light you up. If you do one thing wrong on this thing, he's gonna light you up. And so I'm like, sitting here trying to check it out or whatever. And anyways, I came up with the plan with the with the guy because it was always TOS you didn't TOS is like, Hey, bro, I was like, I'm super tired. We're like, deep into this, like six week experiment. There's only six weeks at the time when I went, Okay. And I was like, you know, six weeks post the zero week. So like, technically, like, seven, whatever. But like, I was like, Hey, man, like, I got an idea. I was like, what if he you sleep for half of the door guard shift? And then I'll sleep for half an hour shift. Yeah. And I was like, that way. They will, you know, we'll be able to get some rest. I was like, I'd much rather only I'd much rather get four hours asleep than zero hours asleep staring at the wall because I'm already about to like, fall out of my face sitting here like looking at the thing. So I'm sitting there and like, I go to sleep. I wait, I go to sleep first. I wake up, fix my bed, whatever, cuz you gotta weasel in like a little burrito or whatever. And then you get out. And then I fix my bed. And I'm like, Hey, man, like, Okay, go ahead. Anyways, they as soon as I get up, I was like, Dude, this, there's no way they as soon as I wake up, they call status check, they want to know, you know, all you got to tell you how many people are in there, you know, or whatever. And so I tell them, you know, like, you know, 36 or 24, whatever number was accounted for. And this lady's like, are you sleeping? And I was like, No. Nope, not sleeping. I'm talking to you. And then so I tell this guy Tali. I was like, it was just a columnist, his name is taller. And we call him Talia is like, you know, just go back to sleep or whatever. And so anyways, a couple days later, they take us down because like I said, we're deep into training. So then they take us down, they're showing us the whole operation. Now we're getting like the behind, you know, the inside baseball, on how basic training works. And we see, the whole place is wired for sound. They were watching you, they could hear you. So at any time, they could the main base, they could clue in their camera, and their microphone to your bay. So they knew that we were sleeping when they asked that question. And so we were just that's why she asked a question like, are you sleeping, I don't know. Because I just like I didn't sound tired. But like, you know, they, they could see the whole thing. So because they wanted to make sure that nobody was like committed suicide, or that's how they knew. And the middle of the night when you're doing if you remember your red line inspection, that's how they knew that you were up. If you were up past bedtime, doing the red line inspection, that's how they knew is they would clue in on these cameras. And then they will come into they would raid you like all the TAs or he was supposed to be sleeping, but you're in there doing your inspections don't want to fail, because if you fail, then you got to like push till your arms give out. And so like we're just like, Oh man, I don't wanna do that. So yeah, they were watching the whole thing. They knew I was sleeping. They knew the whole apparatus, but they didn't ever said anything. So they had to applaud it for being brilliant. So it had to be right. By the way,

Unknown Speaker 9:16
it was not Sean P. Chen, who got me into the who was talking about the British army. It was actually a different person. It was Sean Madigan shout Sean Madigan because I'm sure you know, it's Sean Payton is not British. So as much as he'd like to be but anyway, moving on to the next one. Now it's going to be Moses talking about basic training tech school. We were talking about those two things. But the the most like the biggest thing, I guess is at the end towards the end of this clip, he's talking about how much have you kept in contact with people and I'll tell you like one thing in the Air Force is it's very difficult to keep in contact with people because you go all over the place. You go all over the world and there's a bunch of people from like basic training in tech school. I haven't seen and like, you know, since I joined like 11 plus 11 years now so, yeah, we talked about a couple of things. So yeah, enjoy, obviously, week eight when we do the whole, you know, we can go around town and all that stuff that was cool just to kind of we went and saw the last Harry Potter movie really was Yeah. Okay, so definitely hallows. Was it part two? Maybe it was part one, I don't know. But we went and did that. And it was just like, America is so big and there's so much in America. I'm just like, oh, this is like, hence why I joined because I was going to join the British military, but luckily, the American one, okay. And you know, just the I love the whole kind of I love military bases, because they're just like their own city. Yeah, you're just like, oh, this is sweet. This is great. Like to go around Lackland and see how big it was like, was huge. But then you get to Goodfellow. And it's like, not so huge. Like this is unlike this. There's like nothing here. So that was more like, feeling like you're at home because there was a club that we went to club that you for. I don't know if you remember that. But there was we went there.

Unknown Speaker 11:04
There was midnight rodeo. Yeah. Which one was 84? Was that roses or whatever it was,

Unknown Speaker 11:10
I think it was maybe called something else before but there was another one that was like before that, that people would always tell me about but I can't

Unknown Speaker 11:16
remember when I had like three different like dancers.

Unknown Speaker 11:20
Club at four did not that had just one dance area. But or maybe it did have multiple. I don't remember. I mean, at this time, it was 11 You know, far back, man. I don't even remember last week. 11 years ago, but Goodfellow was more like my, you know, Oh, I feel a little more at home still American.

Unknown Speaker 11:44
This place because there was nothing. There was nothing there. It's

Unknown Speaker 11:47
just like, you know, it's like when I got to Missouri and I was in Knob Noster, Missouri. Now I'm not here. Why Air Force Base? So

Unknown Speaker 11:53
have you have you been back to give? Oh, sense. No, there's a distinct difference.

Unknown Speaker 11:59
Yeah. When you're like when you're not like a little airman.

Unknown Speaker 12:02
I mean, just like town wise. Okay. It's, it's built up. More built up. Okay. Because like I said, that oil, right? There's all this extra stuff and extra people there. Now you're like, who are you? Oh, it's weird.

Unknown Speaker 12:16
I want to go back. Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 12:17
you gotta you gotta check it out. If you ever have to go out for any training. But before before you before you move on. I just want to ask you something. Yeah. So as far as like the people that you've met in tech school, have you seen any of them since? And I don't mean, like, directly after, right. But like, in terms of those relationships that you built there in that short time span? And how that kind of goes and that bonding through the stressful classes and all that. Yeah. Do you still keep in contact with people?

Unknown Speaker 12:43
Yeah. Because like I said, one of my friends went to Kansas. So I saw him. There was a couple of guys I met that, funnily enough, were in the Missouri River. So they were at Whiteman. And they were telling me about Wyoming in Missouri and all this stuff. So I saw those guys a couple of times. There's one dude who is like my roommate, and one of my friends. I haven't seen him since tech school. I've got him on Facebook. But yeah, it's just, it's just wild to think that I haven't seen him in 11 years, but even like, some guys in basic training, was like, Yeah, we're gonna meet up and we're gonna do this, do that. And I haven't seen him in like, 11 years, and you're like, wow, I don't know what this dude looks like anymore. So yeah, you know, as far as keeping in contact with them on social media. Yeah, yes. But as far as seeing them face to face, and a lot of them because people go everywhere, don't. We're just we're all over the place. One, this dude that I haven't seen since he was like, one of my closest friends. In basic training. He was his first base was Guam. So I ain't gonna go to Guam.

Unknown Speaker 13:43
It's not your first, you know? Yeah. stanked is the flat cross. So yeah, okay.

Unknown Speaker 13:50
Let me tell you about something that you'll always hear wherever you go in the Air Force, or at least you're definitely here, if it's a place that notoriously has a bad reputation, like Canada, New Mexico, or my not in North Dakota. And that is this assignment is what you make of it. And that's something that I certainly heard when I went to Missouri because you know, people call it misery and things of that nature. And even when I got there, you could feel that people just weren't happy. And there was just a lot of people who were down there and things like that. And, you know, in this next, this next little clip, I talked to Eric about, you know, assignments, and they are what you make of them pretty much and that's, like I said, that's just a motto that you hear constantly throughout the Air Force, but not even necessarily with the bad places. I mean, he says in here that even places like Hawaii, people dislike and it really is just whatever you're into, but yeah, assignments are what you make of them. So here's myself and Eric talking about that.

Unknown Speaker 14:57
So what I mean like I say it man is I I tried to make the best of wherever I go anyway. So I mean, it wasn't a bad assignment. I mean, like I said, I learned a lot of stuff down while I was there anyway, so man is cool. You know what I mean? It wasn't that bad. So,

Unknown Speaker 15:10
yeah, trust me, like for people listening, like that's one thing you always hear in the Air Force is make the best of where you are. Yeah, it is what you make of it. Because obviously, Missouri, you know, they call misery, misery, misery. You know, when we get there, and you're just like, yeah, just just, you know, it is what you make of it. And but the thing is, you felt people were miserable that Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. A lot of like, people just you know, and of course, there's like, you know, suicides. Oh, I used to have two of my supervisors coast. Wow.

Unknown Speaker 15:42
Well, it's interesting, because, like, just being in the military, you know, especially when I was on active duty, I've met a lot of people that have been traveling, and I've met people that absolutely love my not Air Force Base, they would go back in a heartbeat. And then I met people that absolutely hate Hawaii. You know what I mean? So I mean, it's like you said, it's all relative to who the person is, and just how they perceive things. And so I'd like I said, I just, I just made it up in my mind, man, like, I'm not about to let this place control me. I'm gonna just make the best of it. So I started, I was already in the fishing so and that's what they do down there. I got to hunt for the first time down there, man. I mean, it was just it was I just made the best out of what I could have down here, man. And it just turned out to be pretty good, man. So

Unknown Speaker 16:25
yeah, cuz like marinara is like, most people consider that. There's like there and like, what's, what is it? Yeah. But the thing is, like people talk about, you know, hunting. If you love hot stuff, then you should go there. So I guess it's just like what you enjoy pretty much. One thing that Josh said, which was very interesting was he talked about he did embassy guard duty. And that's something honestly, that I've never heard of anybody doing. I mean, you hear people doing like, escort do II and, you know, having to escort certain foreign nationals to places and keep an eye on them and whatnot. But I found this story very interesting that he deployed and he did these things. You mentioned Saudi Arabia. And it's funny, because I actually asked like, basically the same question twice on this. So yeah, I mean, I was really interested just to find out as much as I could about it. I mean, obviously, with these deployments, a lot of things are classified. But he does talk very well about about that stuff and give good insight. So this is this is a very interesting clip here of Josh talking about doing embassy duty on deployments. And then another thing actually, you were talking about embassy, do you? Did you ever do that? You did that, like in a, like, wherever it was? Was it in like Iraq, or wherever it was? Well, if you can say sorry, yeah, no,

Unknown Speaker 17:47
it's I mean, you can look it up. It's not, it's not like class or anything. It's a Marine security guard. And what we do is protect classified information and American personnel from threats overseas, originally, originally, originally, it was to protect only classified information. But then Benghazi happened, and our mission changed to protect classified information and American personnel. Because that wasn't part of the original mission, which I always thought was hilarious, but I don't know. So embassy guard is a special duty assignment, where you get chosen from your unit, and then you get put into Virginia, Quantico. And you just spend like three months, I want to say, just learning how to protect an embassy. So you get a clearance and whatnot, because you're going to be dealing with sensitive class sensitive information. While that sounds like we're dealing with it, we're we're not like we're not doing we're literally standing inside of a bomb proof box. Going Excuse me, can I see your colored badge? All right. Is this color right? Is it expired? Nope, I can push this button, let him in the door. Yes, I did such a good job. And then I also have to give things that people need. So people will come up to the embassy be like or come up to me and be like, hey, I need this to do my job because you have it at the embassy and whatnot. And you're like, okay, and then you just go and let them in the proper place. So we're glorified doorman. Okay, yeah.

Unknown Speaker 19:22
Did you so well, if you can say like, did you ever like go to certain embassy locations and like actually do that, like, overseas,

Unknown Speaker 19:30
so everyone gets stationed at a certain amount of embassies for a certain amount of time. Everyone depends on what your job is. If you're a detachment commander, meaning you're in charge of that little pocket of Marines in Saudi Arabia. So I was in Doha around Saudi Arabia, I say doctor on because all the diplomats and the people there would be like, Why are you saying it like an American can say like us, and we're like, okay, I must assimilate. And so everyone here thinks I'm being pretentious. But over there, I'm being polite, so damned if you do damned if you don't. But yeah, you go over there you do your assignment, you literally just help the embassy run. And if there is a threat, like, I don't know, anything that does threaten the Embassy of classified information, or American personnel, then we have certain standard operating procedures that we go through, and we make sure nothing bad happens. Or try keyword track.

Unknown Speaker 20:37
So Ross had a lot of good war stories, as people who have been in the military, you know, back in the day, if you want to say that will typically have they'll tell you a lot of those war stories from back in the day. But one thing in particular that Ross talked about was the Haiti mission and how they went out to Haiti. And, you know, they went over there for humanitarian support and all that, and he talks about, you know, the environment and how, you know, there was no electricity, no air conditioning, all that stuff. And obviously, it's a hot place. And, you know, so you will, throughout your career, you know, especially even in the Air Force, you know, you'll you'll go to places that, you know, perhaps don't have the same resources as the US does. So it's just interesting to hear his experience of going over there and how they were trying to help out and whatnot. So here's Ross talking about that

Unknown Speaker 21:33
the Haiti mission was, we weren't alerted. What happened was when the invasion was, was called off, because at that time, Colin Powell, is Haitian, and President Carter went down there diplomatically, talked to general Cedrus, into taking probably a pot of money to retire and leave the country. All the stuff that was gonna go on in Haiti was canceled. And then a month later, a devastating hurricane hit. So the Navy had a, I think it was the Eisenhower off the shore, it might be the right one, but they had an aircraft carrier is a hospital off the coast, we all flew out there to do humanitarian support with generators and water purification and all that and terrible weather there, because it's very, very humid. And imagine the island with no electricity, no air conditioning. It was an interesting dynamic, and there was a lot of disease problems and challenges from the hurricane that we tried to help with.

Unknown Speaker 22:37
In this next clip, Aaron talks about his deployment experience. And the interesting thing here was, he talked about the Navy experience, but particularly with the officers or the pilots, and he talks about how, you know, depending on where you came from, if it was the academy, if it was ROTC, you know, wherever you came from, there was a different experience and a different way that certain officers would, would act. But additionally, there's a bit more stuff that he talks about, where he kind of talks about, you know, activities and playing sports on an aircraft carrier and things of that nature, and, you know, how they, like they'd play music over loudspeakers and how long the work days were and things like that. So this is, this is our and talking about those different experiences, you know,

Unknown Speaker 23:30
we just, we just do workups and we were towards the end of, you know, Desert Storm was over and three days essentially, right. You know, we're a lot of planes leaving with bombs, and we're still hitting targets, I kind of picked up on that. And we had a great relationship with the pilots didn't matter your rank when you're out to see you don't salute. We, we even the officers and pilots call each other by first names there, they're not all about that. The Naval Academy guys are very much sir No, sir. And, you know, want that authority. We gave it to him and a lot of the ROTC ROTC pilots. Amen. As a sorority guy, you know, in college and they'd go party with us, you know, it's like the separation of powers. They didn't care because a lot of them weren't going to make it a career. They went to fly and they move on to the airlines but it was pretty cool and in the academy guys would always have that separation even even from them you know, and so different regime really, but you know, out to the deployment we would have you know, wreck days with throw the football on the flight deck, falling wasn't fun. You know, nonskid is a is a mixture of asphalt and concrete. It's a very heavy material and then they they actually rake it and build lines in between it for drainage. And falling on it was very painful so it'd be going out for a pass. They would put hoops we got to play basketball on and I can't say how many footballs we threw out the ocean, you know, in loudspeakers and whenever new music was being back home, I can't name a couple of songs right now. But whenever a new song was out in the States, of course, we would never know, they would play on the flight deck in the loudspeakers. And then, you know, it's pretty cool. They made it as fun as they possibly could. But when it was work very easily, again to 20 hour days, the longest stretch of time was was 20 hour days, I think for like 17 days in a row of just nonstop grinding. And that'll make a man of you real quick.

Unknown Speaker 25:37
I talk a lot on here about unique experiences, right. And with Lucretia, she had a very rare experience in which she got to go to the Capitol to cover the whole capital attacks, Riot, whatever you want to call it, that went on over there. And to get that experience, I thought it was really cool. Because as someone who's in the Guard or Reserve, I think she was in the guard at the time and to get sent over there. For that mission, I just thought it was was really awesome. And being a journalism or being public affairs, which she was, you know, to get sent over there and experience that and get to cover that, as a journalism person myself, I thought was really cool. So here's Lucretia talking about that.

Unknown Speaker 26:28
We did have some people sleeping on the floor in the Capitol building. Oh, my gosh, that was a huge story, right. And so one of the things I did was snap a photo when we got caught because somebody like donated cots, or they made sure we got caught or something like that. So I snapped a photo. And then one of the security forces people got mad at me. They were like, did you take a picture of me sleeping? Well, yeah. Yeah, I did. Because they want to talk about us where we're sleeping. But I mean, yeah. So it was interesting. Yeah, camping out in the Capitol Building was interesting, especially with army people. With the army people. Yeah, it was, it was good times, we had like, once care while I was there. I know. A lot of my co workers stayed. I was on order. So my time was a little funky. But a lot of my co workers did stay up until the inauguration just to make sure everything was good. But there was just like, one thing that happens where there was a fire not too far away. And so they wanted to mobilize like all these security forces people to go check out this fire. And I remember seeing I don't know who this kid was, or, but he was like a young soldier. And he thought it was hodgepodge. Like, he did not want to be there. He thought this was all a scam or a media. I don't know something. Like a hoax or whatever. And I remember thinking about that, like, that's the thing about the Guard and Reserves. Like you don't have to come here, right? You can literally say no thanks. So and that that's something that sticks with me because you have to watch out for stuff like that. Like if you see people on especially missions like that, that are so important. Like if they don't want to be there then they shouldn't be there because all it does is like stop the mission or inhibits the mission. So alright, yeah,

Unknown Speaker 28:38
I mean yeah, in the Yeah, cuz in the garden reserve you pretty much get to pick like where you want to go base. Yeah, I suppose in like the COVID situation. It was like the guard just got sent there. They didn't really

Unknown Speaker 28:49
right. Especially for those like security forces type units. Like I don't know if they had a choice or not like they stay in buckets. Like this is yours. So you're gonna go this is yours. For for us it was a little different. Yeah, I got to take a selfie with Chief bass in general CQ brown on the on the line. The highlight of my career.

Unknown Speaker 29:17
Thank you for tuning into today's episode of the American military Brett. The outtakes. We're gonna have more outtake episodes coming. So be sure to tune in and listen to all the different things that I unfortunately had to cut out to different podcasts. So tune in for that to hear some more great content. So thank you for listening and goodbye for now.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai