Combat vets how do you feel toward non-combat vets?

There is no difference between a combat and noncombat vet …as a combat vet I can tell you brother that in the Nam the noncombat vets had our backs and were at the ready

As long as it isn’t a bs reason, then I have no reason.

Case n point, had a 1sgt said he “tried” to deploy. He was an apt instructor, then an ait drill sgt, then did five years in Korea

This is a good cop/ bad cop situation. I will play the bad cop and tell you how many of us feel about it. You sign on the dotted line to serve and protect this country above all. If your commander leave you behind to take care of your family you should be grateful to that man, but wasn't right either. Someone took your place on that deployment that probably got a wife and kids just like you. You should have make arrangements like many single parents do to take care of your wife and dont use her as a excuse to be undeployable. I miss my first 2 daughters birth and probably 5 years of my marriage life serving the US Army in a combat arms MOS. If your family situation is unbearable as for you to fulfill your part of the deal you need to find a new way to pay your bills. That goes for transgenders in transition. The Armed forces is not a place for you to get fix up while others take the risk of a combat zone deployment in your place.

No shame in taking care of your family If not for these illnesses you would have gone so I wouldn’t look down on you

You have to do what you have to do and if I served with you I would encourage you to take care of your family.

I served for 29 years; 1977-2006. By the luck of the draw, never made it to Iraq or Afghanistan; not by request, just wasn't in the "right" place due to the needs of the Army. If that makes me less of a soldier in some people's eyes, oh well.

My first enlistment in the Army was in 1971, during the Vietnam War. We all expedited to go and were trained to operate in that environment, we all got called baby killers and spat at by anti war paragons of virtue. But when my training and schools were finished they sent only 2 in our NCO class to SE Asia and the rest of us to Europe. So I never claim to be a VN vet as I never served “in country “ but feel like I understand and am empathetic to my brothers who were there. It is literally a luck of the draw sometimes

Those mature enough to know will only invest some funny kidding around and then share knowledge. Good troops always share experiences to help newer ones adjust and be prepared. A-Holes lord over those that haven't gotten any combat time.

It's same thing as PTSD you don't have to go to combat to get it.

What keeps all the bad actors of this world from doing things like snuffing out the lives of Jews in WW2 all the way through time to now when the latest from current news of chemical warfare against the citizens of Syria are the people who sign up to wear the uniform of our military. Most will sign up not knowing exactly what they will encounter. Some may join up spicifically for a unit that is currently fighting believing they will soon join the fight. Some of this group may be fast on their way to be deployed but wake up the next morning with a fever that sends them home to never see more than an office desk and the wall filled with dramatic pictures of the decorated living and the dead warriors that preceded them.