Thoughts upon military retirement

After completing nine years of active duty and finishing up with eleven years of part-time guard status, it is finally time to hang up the uniform.  


It has been a wild ride, with five deployments to the Middle East and Bosnia and an overseas tour in Korea, which is nothing compared to the deployment schedules of today's active duty troops.


I worked with some great people at times, I learned most of what I know about working with others, and I learned to fly helicopters first in the Army.  I have served alongside many different people who had come together to accomplish something bigger than themselves, and have known quite a few that have lost their lives in defense of our country.  Regardless of the politics or the situations they find themselves in, the all-volunteer troops who serve today perform their duties honorably and faithfully, as I hope and pray they will always do for the good of our country.  


Finally, I was blessed to meet my wife while I was on active duty at Fort Hood, and I owe her much for her love and patience during all my extended time away, which was never easy nor pleasant to deal with.  


So to sum up my military experience, I would like to share "four things that it took me twenty years to learn in the military".  See if any of these apply to your own organization, wherever you work...  


1. If your boss doesn't care, you can get away with pretty much anything.  


2. Formal military schooling, with all its pettiness and artificial stressors, is actually excellent preparation for the real world.  If only to demonstrate that people who don't care and don't do anything in training will not care nor do anything even when lives are at stake.  If you think your screwed up organization will put aside their differences and pull together when it really counts, you are as clueless as I was when I first got on the plane.  


3. The full-time Army National Guard represent the absolute worst of both the DoD Civilian work force and the military, and are richly deserving of the bad reputation that they have earned among active duty types.  


4. When in doubt, go Air Force.  


But I'm not bitter about it... :o