The American Military Brit

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This is the American military Britt,

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shedding light on the realities of military life. Now, here's your host, US Air Force Staff Sergeant Christopher Clark. 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.

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Hello, everyone, and welcome to what is likely to be the final episode of the American military Brit. This is the podcast outtakes Episode Four or episode 14 in total. So for this first clip, I talked to Aaron about, I was very shocked that people could show up to Naval basic training and not know how to swim that, to me was crazy. Because you know that you're in the Navy, you know, you know, you're going to be out to sea a lot. Of course, you have to know how to swim. Like I was just very confused about how people could actually show up. But according to Aaron, people did show up, and they didn't know how to swim. And he also gets into various people having disabilities and whatnot, and kind of how they would deal with those situations in the Navy. So this is a an interesting clip here from our own kind of talking about that stuff, and, and what goes on and how they deal with that. So here's our own talking about those various different things. So just one thing I wanted to comment on was, it was just funny how you said, like, people would come to basic training, and they just didn't even know how to swim. Surely, you know, if you go into the Navy, you gotta, you gotta know how to swim you better. Yeah. Because, yeah, yeah, you would you would think and it was it was baffling. You know, we had, we had some guys too. And I say, guys, because it wasn't, you know, women at the time, they were in Orlando, we had a lot of guys that

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shouldn't have been there, you know, they had some some major disabilities. And,

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you know, and so what they would do is, is if you were, I don't want to use the word term slow, but if there was some, if you had challenges, they would move you back, or they would put you in a

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unit that was for those of disabilities. My friend who's an engineer for a major power company in Denver,

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was super intelligent guy. And I got him to go with me in the buddy system. And somewhere in our testing, they thought his his reading scores were very low. He was the type of guy that can read, you know, a paragraph or something and answer all the questions, right? So

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three weeks in boot camp, he's packing up all his stuff, you see bag, and I'm like, where are you going? And he's like, I apparently have reading problems. And they put him across the street with the disability unit. And so he, it was it always the entire jokes and in teasing them and stuff like that. But so, so the Navy has those two. I mean, I, you know, there was a guy in his unit that, you know, eight weeks had churned into like, 20 weeks, you know, they kept trying to work with them, they didn't want to kick them out, you know. And so you get those two, right, you get the hard chargers, and you get people who shouldn't be there.

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I had an interesting conversation with Lucretia talking about the stork nesting program, which is the program in which they're not allowed to give birth basically, in certain places. I think, I don't know if it's just Turkey, or maybe it's other places as well. But we had a conversation just talking about how you're not allowed to give birth in Turkey. And she had to go to America to give birth and just all the things that were involved in that. And I love stories like this, because it's something that, you know, I don't even know about the military. And you know, somebody brings it up and we just get to talking about it. So, I know in the original episode, we spoke about it just a little bit. But here's just more information. And Lucretia going into in silicon general but also the stork nesting program and us just kind of talking about insulin because a whole that's just that's just wild though, that you can't give birth at Incirlik. Is that is that a country rule or is that it's, it's, it's more it has to do with so there's no hospital on Incirlik. It's a clinic. Oh, so it's a clinic and it's an ambulance services that would transport you to a hospital if you needed to go to one and the issues around

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maternity and giving birth there have to do with standard of care, like their viability, viability, meaning like,

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if in the US if I gave birth to a premature baby at let's say, 20 weeks in the US, they would put

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The baby in the ICU and they would take care of the baby and they would do everything in Turkey. I don't know, um, these aren't exact, but basically, in Turkey, they would say, oh, that baby's that's not a viable pregnancy. Like if the baby is born at 20 weeks to sorry. It's just a loss, right? Also, there was like a big thing about C sections, like they just scheduled you for your C section. When you found out you're pregnant. They did not like natural. It was standard of care type stuff. So like we have different expectations

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in the US versus Turkey and how we give birth and maternal care and that kind of thing. Okay, yeah.

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Yeah. So so after Well, I've been to I've actually been to Incirlik, I was there for I think, was there for a week. Yes, training some intel people, but that was

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yeah, that was that was that was interesting. I actually like Incirlik.

Unknown Speaker 5:54
Yeah, it was really nice. We loved it there. We just had like a crazy work schedule. So we couldn't do things that everybody else was doing like going to Antalya and going to Istanbul. I think we did make it to capital Kia, we made it to

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you matar lick the beach there. But we didn't really do much of anything. And that was annoying. But other than that, yeah, we loved it. And the kids loved it. My son, he got really close to our nanny, everybody had a Turkish nanny and a Turkish gardener. Like that was just the standard, Bear. I don't think they can have families there anymore. But that was the standard. So we had a Turkish nanny that we still love, and that our kids still talk about. So

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one thing I'll always talk to people who come on the podcast about is their assignments, right? And the various assignments that they did. And with to me, obviously, being in the reserves, we talked about the fact that she was out here in Nevada, and she did you know, her reserve assignment out here, basically. But I had to cut that section out for various other things in her podcast episode, which I'm sure you've probably heard about and stuff like that in episode nine. But this next section is just going to be her talking about her assignment in the reserves. And we talked about how you know, the active duty usually like discounts the reserves, because you know, they're part time and things like that. And me being active duty I used to do that as well. But now that I'm reserves, I see the other side. So we go into that as well. But here's to me, uh, talking about her assignment. Okay, so let's kind of talk about well, I say assignments, but it's going to be just like talking about your reserve assignment here in Las Vegas. So let's, let's, let's get into that because we were talking offline about how oftentimes active duty does discount the reserves and I know this because I went from active duty to reserves I remember, when I was active duty we would do we would do the same thing. Basically, we'd be like a reserves and guard, they're just part time. And now I'm reserves and like, you know, yeah, I kind of feel kind of feel it from that that angle now. So yeah, just just talk about like your, your service here in Las Vegas. And pretty much like how it was in the reserve in the reserves of doing, you know, was it just a weekend, a month and all that stuff for you said you did some like active service as well. Yeah. So you do you have a bad a mandatory weekend, a month. And then you also have mandatory annual training, which is anywhere from six weeks to two months during the summer, where you pick up in, you know, leave your family, you know, and go and do your military service for that period of time. And you go, I mean, we went to Camp eylea, which is an Oregon, we do I was telling you, we're doing trainings out at summer flag alpha, you know, what they're doing is there training these, these reservists and these guardsmen to be able to take the slack to pick up the slack, you know, so you know, we we did orienteering we did you know, everything that you that the full time service members did, because bear in mind, and this is what they should bear in mind is that you didn't do all of this stuff every single day when you went work, you know, whereas for us, when we did our Guard or Reserves duty, that was our time to do all of that stuff. So we literally were, you know, from beginning to end of the training, doing whatever the training was, you know, we didn't have the downtime. We didn't have the go to the office and do whatever, you know, that a lot of active duty people do. You know, because you you might be working your specialty, but it's not 24/7 You know, I mean, you you do it at while you're at work, and then you go home, and you have a life while you're in the military. Well here for the reservists and the National Guard people. They have a life here in the community and then they pay

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Put that uniform on and go away for the weekend, their families looking in, like, where are you going? What are you doing, you know, they're not quite really understanding. So you know, so it takes a real, a real strong person with a heart for service, you know, a heart for their community, to say, I'm going to take this time from my family to go and learn what I do become good at what I do, you know, make sure that when they do pick up the phone and call me that I'm gonna go out there and do a good job, because I know what my role is, as this National Guard person or this army person, a reservists person. You know, I think that's really important. And I think that we miss that. When we look at someone that says they were in the guard or the reserve and I you're just in a garden reserve, you know, what, it took just as much commitment, passion for your country and your community, as it did for the active duty people, you know, and sometimes even more so because a lot of times the the people who are serving as reservists their day job, you know, has nothing to do with the military. You know, I was blessed my day job was policing. You know, I was a, you know, last week they're calling police department while I was in the Reserves, you know, so I was actually out there doing a job very similar to what I was going to do on the weekends, you know, but not everybody was doing that. You know, a lot of people were, you know, grocery clerks that, you know, turn around and come you know, cab driver. Yeah, turn around and come on the weekend, you know? Yeah. What, uh, what base was this? Where you were, you are here in here in Las Vegas? What base was, uh, we have an armory at the armory. Yes. Yeah. And there's some other places here too, that you can but at the time we were at the armory. Okay, so it's not like a It's not like for something or not here at

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Nellis? Oh, no. So now we we really didn't go out there because we did our trainings that are at the armory, you know, so we did most of our stuff there. Yeah, so no airfare. I mean, I've gone to Nellis before. Yeah. Visited Dallas before. You know, I didn't do any maneuvers or anything out at Nellis. Okay, so was there any like besides Las Vegas? Like, was there anywhere? Because I know you mentioned you, you went to England for some training and stuff like that? Was there like not that wasn't during the military? Okay, that was just like that was in policing? Yeah. So was there anywhere else un like, you know, you do like annual tours or annual training, things like that. That's all in Las Vegas? No, no, no, our annual training is always away from here. You know, I mentioned Camp eylea. That was that was a an annual trading site. I mentioned that one because it was cool. It was on the beach. But it's been so long and so funny. Like it's been over 20 years, kind of made me remember all these places that I went, you know, but yeah, every year, we went somewhere for, as I mentioned, six, six weeks to two months for training.

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One thing that was also very interesting about Lucretia was the fact that she was active Guard and Reserve. So one thing that I was especially curious about was the difference between Guard and Reserve. I mean, the difference between those two an active is pretty evident. But with the other two, it was kind of like, alright, the garden reserve, what's the difference? And the God is state owned, and the reserve is more like federally owned, I guess you could say, but the thing is, with the reserves, is there more, I guess, closer to taking over active duty roles, or more active duty focused versus guard that do the state mission? Right, at least that's what I gathered from what she said. But really, I mean, you'd be the judge from this clip. I mean, we got into talking about the difference between guard and reserve. And that was something that I was very interested in knowing about because having been active duty all the years that I was I was it was just kind of, alright, the Guard and Reserve are just basically the same thing. But there's actually more to it than that. So here's Lucretia talking about it. And then I'm curious about the difference between Guard and Reserve, like, yeah, the reserves to me, so I'm new to the reserves, so So forewarning. Right, I didn't join the reserves until October 2021.

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And coming from the guard, but so far, it is more like active duty than the guard.

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Okay, let me clear my throat Sorry. It's more like active duty than the guard is because in the reserves, you are focused on

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those federal wide missions, like you are focused on big air force things, if that makes any sense. Does that make sense?

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In the guard, you are the state's neighborhood local military. You are focused on what's happening in Virginia. Your focus on

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the weather that's coming up and watching the emergency weather response like you're focused on here, in the reserves your focus

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Is is the same as active duties. As a matter of fact, it's, it's so much so that we are ready to fill in for active duty. So our focus has to be the same, right? And the guard, you can if you want to, but your mission, really it's twofold missions you there is a federal mission, and then there's a state mission, but most of it unless it's your turn to be in the bucket, your focus is going to be that state mission. And so it's just so much smaller and so much like me, right? Because the guard is like, oh, is owned by the state. Exactly. The reserve is whatever. Yeah. And that can be a disadvantage as well, because your money and your funding comes from the state.

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Okay, yeah.

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Okay, so the next clip is me and Shawn, talking about deployments in Korea. And I feel like this is a theme with me and Shawn, where we just talk about drinking all the time. But yeah, it we're, of course talking about that again, I mean, it's to do with Korea. So of course, we're going to be talking about drinking, but we go into like deployments and stuff and kind of what deployments are like, and it's kind of the same thing with deployments isn't it's just, you eat, you sleep, you work out, and you repeat, and you work as well. That's another thing that you do, you just eat, sleep, work, work out, repeat. And it's just kind of the same routine and it gets a little monotonous at times, but it's just kind of how it goes. But this next clip is going to be me and Shawn talking about that stuff. And also getting into Korea, which again, is the greatest assignment of all time. I mean, I'm not I'm not sitting here saying oh, so rough, you know, it's like, you know, there's definitely worse place to be I've been in some of those places, but it's definitely, you know, it's definitely like you, it challenges your mental capacity because you're just like, I'm so bored. I can't go anywhere like except for within these walls at the time there was still general are number one, so I couldn't even be I couldn't hang out with, like women or anything like that, like you couldn't you couldn't be caught doing anything like that. Yeah, you're three drinks a day or whatever. And like, you know, so I mean, it's, it's not bad. It's honestly in the grand scheme of things not bad at all, but it's definitely trying for your mental definitely challenges your mental capacity, and your ability to be resilient that way. And come home to like 69 packages on your doorstep because you get bored sent over this you just buy an Amazon and then you come back home and your your neighbors put all your Amazon packages in it's like Christmas morning and they're you're cracking these things is like I don't even remember buying this. It's like you bought it like two months into the deployment. So yeah, you got so much money and just like yeah, because you're just obviously saving up from just being deployed but like another two things like the drinks thing that the drinks thing was always funny because you'd get people like when I was in Jordan, for example, you'd get people who would buy like just three shots of vodka like Bang Bang back and like try and get drunk that way. But like for me I just went with beer because I thought it lasted longer basically I wanted like you know, I want to savor this flavor

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but the the other thing as well I just want to say you missed out not going to Korea because Korea was the greatest assignment ever. So everybody says but like Can you can you imagine like even a white men I was just you know I mean I was drinkin photo went over there that would have been terrible like because like I just I don't know I don't know the time is a little bit different place I mean maybe not the time when you were there obviously but like I you know I just didn't want to didn't want to put up with that. I don't like I don't like that. It's like 17 hour flight to get there anyways I'm like I'm not going on that thing. It is like one of the number one reasons why don't want to go and visit anywhere in Asia. It's like Do you know how long it takes to get there? Yeah, right it does it does but that's why like when I got to Asia that's why I've traveled to places like Australia because you have to because when are you going to ever make it back over there but I will I will say this like Kurt Yeah, Korea was amazing. That was how I escaped Missouri. Yeah. That's the thing is like, I was like, you know, I've been analysis this tenure now going on, but I got here 16 So I've been here six years going on seven years or whatever. And, you know, it's like one of those things where it's like, it's like I want to get out of here and they're like, Well, you kind of got some baggage so you're not really gonna be going anywhere and I'm like, Okay, well like how do I get out of here that like you can always push the new killer Korea button and just like go to Korea and then you're definitely getting out of here and I was like, I'll just stay in Vegas. It's fine.

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I mean, you're single Yeah, single in Vegas you know doing the thing so I'll I'll pass Okay, fair enough.

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This next clip is going to be Eric talking about why or why not he would return to active duty Air Force and like I said, you know, with separation with these decisions comes a

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lot of factors with some people. I mean, for me, it was easy because it was just my decision and my decision only. But Eric gets into talking about his kids and talking about the fact that he has a civilian job that that pays a lot, basically. And it would be difficult to turn that down and come back to the military, even though the Air Force does pay good money, you know, we, as having that experience, usually we can get out there and find government jobs that pay a lot more. So there's a lot of factors that go into it. And Eric explains that and it's it's an interesting story, just from his perspective, you know, talking about his kids. And in the podcast previously, he did talk about his job and all that different stuff. So here is Mr. Loving good, ladies and gentlemen. That's good man. Like, what is your I know, obviously, you've got you know, whatever job that you can't really talk about, but like, what is your Do you have any, like, specific goals like, so what's the military? For the military? Is this a retire? You know what I mean? I just want to be able to retire from the military. I don't have I'm not really never had been about like chasing, like rank or anything like that. And like, because I've met like, and I think you understand when I say this, is that I've met some ie nines, and I met some chiefs, you know what I mean? I've met some guys that that are extremely well polished guys that were, I mean, just absolute great chiefs. And then you got some guys who drew for booksmart. And this made it all the way up to the top, you know what I mean? And so I just I figured that, you know, sometimes people's rank is not, is not equivalent to their, to their personality, sometimes, you know what I mean? And so sometimes you got great people, sometimes you don't. And for me, I just knew that my rink, you know, whether whatever I retire at, you know what I mean? That's just going to be so fast to be sufficient enough for me, because at this point, it's kind of by my kids now, you know, what I mean? Like, the reserves allows me to spend more time with my kids, rather than so much than it did when I was on active duty. And so me being, you know, my oldest is 13. Now, you know, so he's getting older, you know what I mean? And I want to be there for a lot of the stuff that he that he wants to do you know what I mean? And with active duty, that means we'd have to keep moving around doing everything. And that's perfectly fine for some people. But for me, I had been doing it enough to be like, okay, hey, this isn't about me anymore. They're getting older. It's about them now. So yeah.

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The last clip is going to be to me a talking about what was, without a doubt, the most important thing that was talked about on this podcast, and that is suicide and helping each other out. And her being a chaplain, and kind of the people that she comes across and the things that she sees, and ways to improve basically helping each other out. And it's interesting, because I did hear a famous person just this past weekend talking about how is his friend killed himself. And you know, just because probably he just wasn't willing to talk about his issues, he just kept them bottled in. And that's what a lot of us men do is we don't want to talk about our feelings and whatnot, because we're looked at as weak and that is kind of a stereotype a lot with talking about issues and that's why people come to these thoughts of committing suicide is because they keep their feelings bottled up. So I wanted to finish on this topic just because it's very important. It's just without question, one of the most important things out there right now so here's to me talking a little bit more about that stuff. Man, I love you man. Think about the things we've done together man think about what you know your future you said you wanted to do this and this and this you know, talk to the person

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and if this person comes to your mind to tell you guys this, okay, this is coming from a chaplain. So you know, if this person keeps coming to your mind, you haven't talked to him in a while, pick up that phone.

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Pick up that phone, because I don't know where you're at spiritually. You know, I'll give you this I'll say this word, that's the universe telling you to call that person because they need you.

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And that's tapping into you saying you're going to be the one that makes a difference by making that phone call or going by the house

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you walk by somebody's house you go inside their house, there's absolutely nothing and you know, it used to be furnished. That's a clue.

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So we need to learn to take better care of each other because the solution is not let's grab a beer and go to the bar. The solution is hey, let's go for a walk man. Let's go for whatever and and I'm and I say the walk thing because nature and activity is a positive for your brain. You know so so get out you know do let's go for a ride let's go to the mountains. You know, let's go wherever you know wherever you know this person likes and even if

Unknown Speaker 25:00
If you don't know, they like it, do you like to, you know, I'm gonna run up to the mountains, you want to come with me? You know, now you got this person in the car. And here's the thing about road trips to tell you guys about road trips, if you've ever taken a road trip, how much conversation you have going on in the car,

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it gets deep, it gets deep, you know. So take a road trip, you know, ride ride to wherever, you know, if you're here in Vegas, you know, take take a red rock ride, take, you know, but I say go to scenery. So you guys can talk about nature and things that you may have done in the military together. If you're, you know, if you're service members together, or if it's just a friend, maybe they're not that, you know, but you're seeing this in them. You know, this is this is my teaching moment for everybody. You know, we don't want to lose another when they say we lose 22

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service members, whether in service veteran, you know, any kind of service related military service related a day, that breaks my heart, that just truly breaks my heart. And here's the thing, we can't only say, Oh, well, you know, I tried to send him to the vet center. I tried to this I tried to that. What do we just say? Nobody wants to go through that. Nobody wants to stigma. Nobody wants to innocent. You know what, I'm gonna come to you.

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I'm going to sit down with you. We're going to have a conversation. Because sometimes people pray.

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When I say pray, they'll say, if just somebody reached out to me, if somebody contacts me today, if somebody they put it out there, you know.

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And then now you got that Inkling saying Hey, call bill, pick up the phone and call bill. And then you don't.

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And now you get a call

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about Bill.

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None of us want to none of us want that call.

Unknown Speaker 26:50
So I say check in check your body. You know, we talked about having everybody six right? Oh, I got your six I got you, buddy. Well, let's really have them. Mental health wise. And let's be real in our conversations with one another. You know,

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man, you look you know, you look bad. You know, I'll know what's going on with you. Let's talk.

Unknown Speaker 27:12
Because you don't know how much that let's talk. Really you sitting there listening to them? Not just you going? Oh, let's talk okay. Oh, what my phone is ringing Hold on, let me get this hold on a minute. Okay, yeah, shut up over there. I'm trying to talk to my friend. But no, we talked less talk, come on, let's go out to the car. You know, let's go down to the park. Let's go and then talk about it and let that person talk about it. Because they don't go all over the place. But let them pour it out. Because once you let them pour it out. Now it's not in that head. Okay, now it's that in that head, you know, and you just I say, I don't know, if you're if you you know, we know we had people, multiple faces and stuff here. But I always say just take a moment and say, you know, help me find the right words, meaning your response. But in the meantime, just listen, just listen, just listen, just listen. And really listen, don't be thinking about what you're going to say back to them, you know, don't be thinking about oh, this is what I'm going to tell them. You know, as soon as he finishes, you know, just say just one more time.

Unknown Speaker 28:13
And even if you lose some of it, just let them talk. Because Because everybody needs that vent. Everybody needs that, that just offloading you know, and when they don't get it, that's when they blow up. That's when they explode. That's when they if they're not going to go out and do like these crazy shooters, you know, and take other people out, that's when they decide to take themselves out.

Unknown Speaker 28:35
So we need to be there for one another.

Unknown Speaker 28:39
Okay, fans, as I mentioned before, this is likely to be the last episode of the American military, Brit. And if it is, I just want to say thank you to all the fans, all the people that supported this podcast. And honestly, it's been a pleasure to do this podcast. It's the first ever podcast I've gotten to do and, you know, to get this valuable experience that's needed to possibly do a podcast in the future. It's been a very valuable experience. And I hope you've enjoyed the stories. We've had some fantastic guests on here. And I hope you've enjoyed the stories that they've provided to us. And hopefully you got some good information out of it. If you've if you've made it through this far. I'm assuming you did enjoy it. So I want to say thank you to the fans, yes, but also the guests as well. So a special thank you to grant Moses, Josh Ross, Sean, Aaron, Eric, to me, and Lucretia for just being fantastic guests. Really they were just they were amazing. So thank you to them. And also thank you to the fans in particular, my number one fan Daniel Kirner, aka D nasty What a legend and just thank you to all of the fans for your support your feedback, and I appreciate you all and if this is goodbye, then thank you to you

Unknown Speaker 30:00
All but you know maybe we'll see each other or maybe we'll talk to each other again in the future so thank you very much and goodbye

Transcribed by https://otter.ai