Grunt: is just a term that means foot Soldier, or infantryman. In the Marines, I believe they're called Riflemen or perhaps infantry as well- I dunno.

They do- do the most physical and laborious work. But, at the end of the day, those of us who aren't "Grunts" with regard to our physical job, are indeed grunts under the skin. That's why we all go to "Basic" training. If push comes to shove, every Soldier is an infantryman first, and your MOS (Military Occupational Specialty) is your secondary role.

We all live to support that soldier in the field. And- we'd better to a damn-good job of supporting him too, because if too many like him get killed- guess who's next to take the point? That's right, some jokers holding MOS's whose skill or mission is not as critically needed- at the time.

After that, it's time for the draft.

PS: There are also different kinds of respect. Mutual respect is something decent people give each other. But, in the military and on your jobs, in schools, etc- there is another type of respect, and that's leadership respect. For civilians, this is somewhat different. You are not duty bound, and oath sworn to follow the orders of those in charge of you. You can tell your boss to ____ off, and there are no consequences. Not so in the military.

In the military, you are duty bound and oath sworn to obey the lawful orders of those in charge of you. That means, respect for the uniform, and the rank affixed to it, even if you can't stand the person giving the orders, or wearing the uniform.

Respect is one thing, Leadership is another. Respect for a person doesn't mean you want to follow them. But, you are ordered to.

A true leader inspires those under him or her, to go the extra mile, without having to be asked to do so. Leaders earn your respect, whether you work for them, or not. But, one can never "earn" your respect, if they don't have a chance to know you. That's why 2nd LT's have such a hard time. Not only is it a right of passage, but because the Platoon sergeant keeps them away from the daily grind- so it's rare that you even see the LT, let alone get to know him/her- and what kind of leader they may be- until its crunch time. As enlisted, we have time to grow into our role as leaders. Officers are shake & bakes, and they don't have time to grow- it's put upon them.


You may not trust them, and frankly- you may know more about soldering than them- even though they have a degree, ROTC, OCS- and you may not. That's where respect of the uniform comes in. They know you might not respect a person younger than you, with less time in service, and who couldn't find their butt with both hands. But, if you are in, you're bound to follow their lawful orders, or spend QT in the brig, or Leavenworth. Respect for the uniform and the rank, is there to ensure you have to respect what it represents, long enough to have a chance to respect the person who's wearing it.

More than that, it's about comraderie, and espirit de corps. But, if you've never worn a uniform, or- if you've worn one- but didn't take it seriously- then it's going to be hard for you to grasp the concept of selfless service, and what that implies.

But no, you can't take respect. Respect as a leader is earned.

 

Well, I guess the Marine Corps and Army don't have the "same end-result" as far as boot camp, huh?

 

Grunt. We used "Grunt" in many ways. For example:

I was a Combat Engineer (1371) and we were sometimes called "Grunts with C4".

 

Yup, some great folks in the Marine Corps. Some aren't. I served with some lazy sh**birds myself. Some were total morons. A few didn't deserve to wear the uniform but somehow managed to stay in despite their loathing of the service. It's these folks that cause me to cringe every time someone lables anyone wearing a uniform as a hero. Speaking of which...that's a very overused word. I served but was no hero. The more we throw that word around the more it diminishes the value of the word and the people who really deserve it.

 

Same end result is a man or woman who is basically trained as an infantry soldier, who coudl perform if they had to, on a battlefield, and one who is disciplined, and well educated in basic military doctrine.

The PT test, at the end of the day- while different, is not that much more strenuous. Obviously 3 miles is further than 2, but our PT test was scored in a way that if you're 18 - 22, you had to do that run in less than 15:54. That was the minimum to pass, but to score the max (100 points), you had to run two miles in 11:54.

As for the running itself, we ran our ***** off in the Army: A two or three mile run was no biggie. We did those almost every morning, but on Fridays, to pound out a 5, 6, 7, 8, or 14-mile run was not out of the ordinary.

So, 3 miles- while significant, is not a deal breaker for a Soldier. That's why a marine can join the Army, and there is no additional training involved, and a Soldier can join the Marines with no additional training involved.

Soldiers and Marines share a lot of the same GI DNA.

 

I went to PLDC with a bunch of infantry guys, and other combat arms MOS's.

We had a lot of guys who had transitioned from teh M-60 tank to the M-1 Abrams. They guy told me he went from being a DAT to being a CDAT. We were like, "Huh? What's a DAT and a CDAT?"

He said, I used to be a Dumb A** Tanker (DAT) now I'm a Computerized Dumb A** Tanker (CDAT).

That came back to mind when you mentioned being a Grunt with C4.

 

This is true. I will never "knock or talk down to" any other service member, in any way. We are all doing the same job, we are just in different "gangs".

 

True, we may rib each other, but if a barfight broke out, and it was civilians versus service members, Marines, Soldiers, Sailors, and Airmen would all have each others back.

Be it special teams, offense, defense, or coming off the bench- we're all on the same team.


Like someone said above. There's always scrubs in every unit, and every branch of service. In a platoon of 48 people, you'll have five hard-charging razors, five dirt-bag whiners, and 38 good/average soldiers. You have to consider the source. Maybe he's one of those jokers whose counting the days down on his enlistment. "All I got left is 180 days and a wake up..." (Dirt bag) Those are the kind of whiners that make us all look bad.

For a better example, watch the movie Aliens, and listen to Bill Paxton's character (Private Hudson). Whoever did that research was spot-on. You have loser/dirt bags like that in every unit.

 

I remember when I was close to my EAS .. about a month out. 180 days? A Marine can still get in plenty of training in 180 days.

SSGT - "jamzwayne, are you PTing today?"
ME - "Negative SSGT - I am checking out with supply".
SSGT - "Supply is PTing with us you assclown!"
Me - "DAMN!"

He'd let me off anyway.

I can honestly say this, I miss the Corps.

 

I miss the Army too...

Yeah, being a married soldier at Fort Hood in late 1996, we got 20 business days to outprocess stateside. 10 business days for a single soldier. the hardest part was turning the TA-50 back in. Just prepare your self mentally- fo rthe fact that you had to wash everything 3 - 4 times to get it to pass inspection- and then, maybe.

All we had to do was show up to one formation a day for accountability. So, not liking getting up at 5 to be at work by 6:30 AM, I came to final formation, at 5:00 PM.

The only thing I stopped liking about Army PT, was the small unit concept. That trickeled down right into PT too. I liked doing company-level PT. It didn't feel right doing PT with 5-6 other jokers, not when you're used to doign PT with 180 - 190. The only time we did company PT was on some Fridays, and some paydays- when you'd have 500 jokers out there running together for 3 or 6 miles... It was a beautiful thing.

I was REALLY on the fence durign my ETS, because I hadn't found another job yet. I was "this" close to re-enlisting. Sometimes, I wish I had.

Then, when it's 33 degrees and raining, and I know we'd have been outside that morning, getting ready to do PT anyway. I kinda miss it, and I kinda don't.

Extend to the left, march!

 

Sent ya a PM Hersh ... good stuff too.

 

See, I HATED the big unit PT. I ran Cross Country in High School and running at the pace they did for unit runs absolutely killed me. I felt like I was running at a walking pace. When it was available I volunteered for road guard duty. That way I could at least get to sprint back to the front and usually was keeping a good average pace. Then there was the stupid cadance thing. Nothing like running really really slow and singing. I actually enjoyed the PFT because I could run on my own pace.

What you said about 33 degrees and raining...spot on! There's things I miss and things I don't for sure.

 

Oh yeah, formation runs killed me at first.

I was one of those people that could run, and run forever and not get tired in high school.

Once I started running in formations at a snails pace, it screwed me up.

 

See, we had three groups on unit runs. We had the fast group- anyone who ran the 2-mile in under 13 minutes was in the "fast group". Then we had the medium group for those who ran 13:01 - 15:00, then we had the slow group who ran 15:01 and up. So, the jack-rabbits all ran together.

I used to be a jack rabbit, back in my 12:05 2-mile days, but eventually I slacked off and ran with the slow group. That might be why my calves used to hurt so bad.

You're right though, there were times I'd go take a PT test, even though I wasn't due one yet, just so I could run and get it over with. At least on a PT test, you only had to run 2 miles. Depending on how the CO felt, on Friday, you might run 5, 6, 8 miles... One day (well, actually that happened 2 or 3 times) we did 14 miles. We ran it in 2 hours. Running (jogging) like that, you go into a "zone" after 6 or so miles- and its like you can run forever...

My last CO in Germany was a track runner, and he used to wrestle at Penn State. So, that SOB was a machine- when it came to running.

We had two guys in my first unit that ran the 2-mile in under 10 minutes. That's not easy to do, just minutes after you've done 2-minutes of sit-ups, and your thighs are tight and hard enough to crack pecans.

 

Y'all had seperate teams?

Like, a platoon was broken up into groups for running formations?

No way that would happen in the Corps.

"The platoon is only as fast as the slowest Marine".