{"id":118033,"date":"2021-10-01T09:21:20","date_gmt":"2021-10-01T13:21:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=118033"},"modified":"2021-10-01T09:34:59","modified_gmt":"2021-10-01T13:34:59","slug":"the-three-curses-of-military-service-mr-almost-served-mr-thank-you-and-the-liar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=118033","title":{"rendered":"Three Curses of No Military Service: Almost Served Guy, Mr. Thank You and The Liar"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Yahoo News<\/a> came out with an article yesterday that attempts to break down the groups of people that never served in the military.\u00a0 The author divides them into three groups: 1) the Almost Served Guy, 2) the Mr. Thank You, and 3) The Liar.<\/p>\n

I don’t know if it is as simple as that but the article was entertaining in its attempt to categorize.<\/p>\n

\n

The three curses<\/a><\/h2>\n

by Trent Reedy<\/em>
\nThu, September 30, 2021<\/em><\/p>\n

All service members, no matter their military job or duty station, must eventually face three curses so universal that I\u2019d be shocked to find a single one who has not encountered them.<\/p>\n

The first curse is Almost Served Guy. Many who never served in the military love talking about how they very nearly signed up. Of course, there are many legitimate reasons why a person might not serve. One friend of mine wept because his asthma prevented his enlistment. But while my asthmatic friend\u2019s situation was a heartbreaking tragedy, a true Almost Served Guy is just a tragic joke.<\/p>\n

Almost Served Guy\u2019s excuses are usually attempts at self-aggrandizement. He nearly enlisted, but he\u2019s so tough, he worried he\u2019d punch the angry drill sergeants. The Marines wouldn\u2019t let him sign up as an underwater sniper recon space paratrooper. An Almost Served Guy once tried to impress one of my friends, a major who served in both Iraq and Afghanistan, by explaining he canceled his enlistment after receiving a football scholarship to a major university. \u201cYou could tell he\u2019d never been in shape,\u201d she said. \u201cI just said, \u2018Oh, cool.\u2019 I don\u2019t know why anyone would think I\u2019d be impressed by that.\u201d<\/p>\n

The second curse is Mr. Thank You. Don\u2019t get me wrong. No good American wants to go back to a 1970s-style situation with leftists spitting on returning soldiers. Soldiers appreciate gratitude. But Mr. Thank You takes it too far, saying things like, \u201cI would have no freedom if you hadn\u2019t served.\u201d The U.S. military is crucial to preserving liberty, but Mr. Thank You talks as though that one service member personally secured his freedom to vote, take out a mortgage, or eat a hot dog. His gushing gratitude often just comes across as self-loathing. I encountered a Mr. Thank You once when out drinking with my best Army buddies. \u201cThank you so much for my freedom,\u201d he said. \u201cI didn\u2019t have the courage or strength to enlist. I wasn\u2019t as good as you.\u201d It was super uncomfortable.<\/p>\n

\u201cI appreciate that.\u201d I finally had to interrupt him. \u201cBut unless this is going to end in you buying me a beer, I\u2019d like to return to my conversation with my friends.\u201d<\/p>\n

The final curse is the Liar. The worst of the Liars violate the Stolen Valor Act of 2013, which makes it illegal to lie about one\u2019s service to claim jobs, money, or other benefits. Otherwise, it\u2019s perfectly legal to lie about military service, and somehow, service members often get stuck listening to these stories. The Liar\u2019s tales are usually ridiculous but harmless, as when a co-worker claims to have been an Air Force pilot shot down by the Soviets over the Bering Strait or when your barista explains he was this close to catching Osama bin Laden while on a secret mission in Argentina.<\/p>\n

But once in a while, the Liar does something worse. Sgt. Lisbon served in my company as we trained for Afghanistan. He was a highly respected infantryman who\u2019d passed through the difficult Army Ranger School and was qualified for explosives ordnance disposal, or EOD. Rangers are top-notch fighters, and EOD soldiers are explosives experts tasked with safely destroying unexploded bombs, a precise, technical job.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou guys are combat engineers?\u201d Lisbon sneered at my fellow engineer and me. \u201cI need to see what you know before I let you handle explosives.\u201d<\/p>\n

The problem was that Lisbon never had Ranger or EOD training. In an infantry company, he might\u2019ve been able to fake being a Ranger, but when working with explosives, especially on the EOD level, one must know what one\u2019s doing. Had Lisbon attempted, with no training, to work with C4 plastic explosives or IEDs, he probably would\u2019ve killed us. Fortunately, his lies were discovered, and he was busted in rank and stripped of authority.<\/p>\n

The three curses \u2014 Almost Served Guy, Mr. Thank You, and the Liar \u2014 are real. Sooner or later, every service member encounters them.<\/p>\n

*Some names and call signs in this story may have been changed due to operational security or privacy concerns.<\/p>\n

Trent Reedy served as a combat engineer in the Iowa National Guard from 1999 to 2005, including a tour of duty in Afghanistan.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yahoo News came out with an article yesterday that attempts to break down the groups of … Three Curses of No Military Service: Almost Served Guy, Mr. Thank You and The Liar<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":663,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[408,183],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-118033","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-stolen-valor","category-stolen-valor-act"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118033","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/663"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=118033"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118033\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":118152,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118033\/revisions\/118152"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=118033"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=118033"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=118033"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}