Oddbean

I bet you wouldn't mind the company, though... 😎 Glad you ran into her. I'm very unlikely to ever see any of those I deployed with. I kinda wish that one captain had actually come to a company cookout, though... She was super cute. I loved the way she walked. I can't explain it other than that.

No one ever bothered to keep in touch. If I was an idiot I could probably find them on the FB, but... No. So, it is what it is. There were only ~5 I'd ever want to talk to, anyway. Yeah. Those things get weird sometimes. It was annoying joining later than most since I was older than many staff sergeants and captains. 🙄 "Lookey here, SIR. You technically outrank me, but in my shop, *I* am both the subject matter expert and safety officer. Kindly GTFO." 😒

I get it. They do get weird. Hard to carry relationships like that outside of the service. Rank can definitely overinflate a person's ego. I've seen too many bad calls occur because of that exact reason.

I never got that impression from that captain. She was a CO of a medivac unit. I did a bunch of work for them. I got a commendation out of it. We even went on leave at the same time. It was very pleasant to have her squished next to me (even in full body armor) on the C130 cargo netting seats. She had a jailbroken ipod and was playing a brick breaker game... I melted. Like, I knew she was cute, but that? Man... Then we got stuck a few days before catching a flight back to the base. I talked to her a bit there since we were all in PT uniforms and no one knew it respective rank. I kinda regret not saying something more than just acceptable chit chat. I honestly didn't want to cause her any trouble. She wouldn't deserve that. But I do wonder...

She seemed to be. I don't know if it was her idea, but she implemented a plan to greatly reduce time to pickup casevacs. (That was part of the work I was doing, and I won't publicly mention more than that.) Saved some lives, though, my unit was very on point within our operational theater, at least after the previous, grossly lax unit left the AO. It didn't take the local and foreign fighters long to realize that we were not soft targets. 😎

She seemed to be a good CO. I think I was older than by that point. New captain VS. Just an idiot enlisted who joined years later than anyone else... If anything, we were certainly close in age. I'm salty cuz I've never gotten a ride in a helicopter. I just want to do it once. I was hoping I could ask for a ride, but I never got the chance.

My last CO was too bloody inexperienced. Very little combat experience and he rarely took any advice from a lowly enlisted man like myself. Although I won't deny it, I do feel bad for him. He did lose a leg, I heard. I've been in a chopper a fair amount of times. They are quite fun to be in 👍. Mainly the Bell 412. I've seen Apaches land on my base a few times, as well. I would hate to be under fire from one of those. 👀

I had very bad leadership in my unit, with rare exception. Ugh. Loosing a leg in a stupid war is not what anyone deserves. I'm a little jelly of your chopper rides. For me, the possibility that I'll have to face off with an Apache is never zero.

Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are. John Wooden This quote always served me well 🥰🫡🫂