I apologize in advance, because this is definitely going to be a bit of a "woe is me" post, but I just wanted to jump on a soapbox for a second. I don't know if my experience was "below average" in comparison to everyone else in the service, but it definitely wasn't the best and brightest, and I want to bitch and moan for a second just to say "please don't let this happen to your soldiers" if nothing else. Take a read if you want, see if this is an average experience or if I just have some of the world's worst luck, and make sure that none of this stuff happens to your soldiers. My mood on the Army is completely soured, but I still love a bunch of these guys and want to see them get far in their career.

So, I joined about eight years ago, regrettably in the Reserve at first. Basic was fine, nothing out of the ordinary that doesn't happen to your average kid out of high school. Got to AIT, then my reserve unit, and for the next few years, I just floated around in the civilian world while playing dress-up once a month. Things went downhill around 2016-2017(?), though, and I got hit with my first "batch of bad luck."

I was heading to drill one morning, same as ever, but when I got there, my 1SG promptly ran up to me and asked what the hell I was doing there. I was confused, so I asked for clarification. Apparently, I was overdue on LHI (the Reserve's method of scheduling appointments) and couldn't "legally" be at drill. I had no idea what he was talking about, and he seemed even more dumbfounded that I was clueless. As you can probably guess, things in the Reserve work way different than Active. Everything moves at a snail's pace, and at the time, I had no idea what MEDPROS even was. Nobody told me that, as a civilian, I had to do stay up to date on medical readiness. Apparently, my first line was supposed to brief this to me when I first got there. As a little PV2, I felt blindsided and annoyed at the lack of communication, but sure, that's the Reserve for you. I sucked it up, left drill, made my appointments, and waited.

Medical and dental were both hell. For some quick and dirty info, the doctors you get to schedule your appointments through are oftentimes pretty hit or miss when dealing with soldiers. The first medical appointment I went to, I got turned away because "they had no idea I had to do a blood draw" and the "person who could do it wasn't there that day." Makes no sense but okay, fine, whatever. I made another appointment, waited another two weeks, and finally got that taken care of, exactly one month later. I was handling dental at the same time, which was almost the exact same: I made an appointment, found out that it was more or less just a "let's see what's wrong with you" appointment, then they set up another appointment to actually do the work. Almost two months, and two missed Drills later, I was finally up to date on my MEDPROS.

A little later, we held an annual training in Utah. The "Two weeks out of the year" thing the Reserve does was going to be a field exercise at Dugway, and in fairness, it was pretty fun. Got my first AAM there, and I was really starting to get gung-ho about going active. I was putting in conditional release packets, had just finished my SSD-1, and was begging to go to BLC. More on that later, though. I was approached and asked by a SSG if I wanted to get put on extra duty to help clean the arms room following the exercise, and I was siked to do it. I wanted to get all the army could throw at me, because extra duty meant extra pay, and my civilian job was paying trash at the time. I took it, and a couple weeks later, we were back home helping completely reorganize the arms room.

Now, apparently, we did a big bunch of no-no's during that cleanup. Unauthorized people bouncing in and out all day to clean the arms room without escorts (something I had no idea at the time was wrong), and a bunch of Reservists playing with all the new equipment. We had just gotten one new handgun in the unit, one of the new M17 handguns, and people were lining up to take pictures of it and get hands on it. I wasn't all that interested—I'm not much of a gun guy. Ironic, I know. But at some point between lunch and the afternoon, someone ran off with it. Straight up stole the thing. And after seven hours rolled around of us trying to find this thing, we finally gave up and called higher.

Here's the great thing about Reservists: They all have civilian jobs. And wouldn't you know it, the guy in charge of us also just so happened to be FBI, CIA, or some such. Forgive me for not remembering specifically, but he managed to get a whole formal investigation opened up overnight. We were allowed to go home that night after 10PM, and the next day when we came through to finish cleaning, someone had tossed the handgun over the fence in a big bag. Cool, I guess.

Even though the handgun was found, all twenty or so of us were flagged and under CID investigation for the next year. The case did eventually go cold and I got the flag dropped, but it was just long enough to stop everything I was trying to do in its tracks. BLC, my conditional release, the whole nine yards. After the investigation wrapped up, I moved out of state for a few months to be with my new girlfriend, and decided to try and use my $10,000 scholarship loan repayment that I'd signed up for instead of a 2K bonus when I joined the Army. Surprise, though, I couldn't use it. Why? because I missed too many drill days. Why, you might ask? Because of the MEDPROS issue from over a year back. Because nobody told me about LHI, and because of all those delayed appointments, my "bonus" was now null and void. I had exactly $10k worth of loans from a semester of college, and at a time in my life where I needed that debt relief the most, I found out that I was no longer obliged to have it.

On top of that, I was also putting in requests to go to BLC—eight times, once a month, for eight months straight. We had a LTC that we nicknamed "Turbo," because this guy wasn't very bright. Slow as all hell, couldn't remember anything after ten minutes, somewhere in his sixties, and he was in charge of all our class scheduling. We once requested almost the entire unit's junior enlisted get slotted for unit armory classes, and by the time next month rolled around, this guy hadn't done one of them—he didn't even remember all of us coming up to request it. Likewise, he continued to forget my BLC requests. Every month, I filled out a new request form, and every month, it got lost. I'd ask him to check and see if he'd slotted my name somewhere, and every month, he'd check his computer. "Nope, nothing here. But put in a request and uh...I'll get it covered." A buddy of mine who was also trying to get it at the time was asking around to see if anyone else could help us, but once again, the Reserve is a different animal. Finding help was few and far between.

After a year, my flag from CID was finally lifted, and I was back to putting in conditional releases. I was trying to talk to people outside of my unit to find any help I could get because, much like the BLC requests, me and my buddy were putting in release packets once every quarter for almost a year longer than the BLC requests. We'd been trying to get out to go Active since 2019, and didn't hear so much as a whisper for over two years. Every time we went to S1, we got the whole "It's processing" shtick, and so we waited. And waited. And waited. Until we got a new commander in 2021, who decided to try to do a mass cleanup of our unit, only to find that there was a pristine, untouched stack of release packets between me and my buddy in S1's desk. We sent our packets to him afterwards, and he managed to get us out within three months. After five years, and with only a few months before my Reserve ETS date, I finally managed to get my Active contract.

I got sent to Fort Fucking Drum.

I've dealt with a lot of marketable but less annoying shit since I've been here, including getting sent on deployment with 25 days notice and having my promotion temporarily shafted due to some HRC shit. But between Drum's senseless policies and my exponentially growing saltiness towards the Army as a whole, I don't want to get too deep into the rabbit hole that is my Active experience. Suffice it to say, I'm ready to get out while I still have my sanity somewhat intact.

​

For leaders: Don't be a shitbag. If you get put in charge of a soldier, study up on what they absolutely have to know. Go to your highers if you don't know—it's okay to be new at being a leader. Your best effort is all that anyone can ask for, and even if you hate your job just like I do and spend every day counting down the clock, you still need to make sure you're not fucking the person you're in charge of. It's not just being a good leader, it's part of being a good human. And who knows? It might just save them their bonus.

I'm getting out here soon, because this has just been too much for me. I miss the days of running a normal 9 to 5 job and not having my wife despise my life choices. For those of you staying in, I hope you guys make the best and most of it and remember to never let the Army screw you or your soldiers out of their career or entitlements.