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1LT Rich Voss
No, Brad, you couldn't. Good one though. I'll say that I got to "request" Armor , and that my "request" was granted. But in the mid-60's, there was a branch specific school for almost everything. I went to an "Advanced AIT" in which three platoons were "potential" Officer Candidates, and the 4th was all NGs. I met guys that were going to OCS' for everything. Transportation, Signal, Engineers, lots of Infantry & Artillery, and the handful of us that wanted to be tankers. We all graduated OCS at Fort Knox together, four of us went to Germany, one to Korea. All of us that went to Germany lived. Have no idea about the 90 plus percent of the others. Perhaps many didn't even make it out of their OCS class. "Don't Get Off the Tank !"
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Officers don't get to choose their branch. We can list the ones we want but there is no guarantee that we will get what we want.
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SGT (Join to see)
I know you have to list the branch you want and if you granted your branch then you proceed from there. But with the 19 series being basically two different yet the same MOS. I was just figuring If you got to list the one you wanted.
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MAJ (Join to see)
SGT (Join to see) - Ah, gotcha. Unless something has changed you just get selected for armor. Nothing distinguished one from the other.
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It's all about needs of the Army. Luckily the Army always need combat arms. But it also depends on your commissioning source. If you go to OCS with a class of 300 candidates and you have only 15 armor slots in your class the preference is going to those higher performers in the class. Unless no one wants it. But there is no guarantee on anything when you start.
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SGT (Join to see)
While the needs of the army always moves around, maybe I'll get lucky and can get 19B.
Thank you sir.
Thank you sir.
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LTC (Join to see)
I guess times have changed. I became an armor officer as a branch transfer in the California National Guard back in the day where they still had three armor battalions. The peace dividend was a sham so I wouldn't be surprised at Armor becomes important again. With what's going on Iran, North Korea, Ukraine and Russian threats to Nato, I believe armor officers and bringing back the reforger exercise will be needed again in the next 5 years.
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