"Quit calling us POGs"

I guess the paratroopers should stop calling the guys & girls with less determination, willingness, drive, and guts LEGS ...NOT !

One thing that can be said about the so called POGs, they do have much brighter future after their military career than the average grunt because it's not as hard to translate their skill set versus combat skills to a civilian career. Embrace the POG title it'll pay off for you.

POG used to be POGUE years ago, but it still is mostly used in a derogitory manner. Everyone has a job to do. Bur it's always the "my job is harder, more dangerous" or whatever. Been going on for years. Other terms have been used now and in the past. REMF, LEG, FEATHER MERCHANT, STRAP HANGER, and my absolute favorite, CHAIR FORCE since I am Air Force. Joint service trained as an EOD tech, I learne a lot when I was designated as NCOIC of my class at the basic school. I had Marines, Army, and a couple sailors as well as Air Force in my class. Yeah, I was tested harder by some instructors to see if I could hack it and if I was worthy of my post.
I almost forgot. There are a few more that might be a bit dated, but I have heard them many times. Anchor Clankers or Squids. Sea Going Bellhops. Propellor Heads, Doggies o whatever else is there.
Do your job the best you can and be proud of what you do. Those derogatory names or terms, I believe will still be around when we are long gone.
Besides. I get crap sometimes from one particular SF SFC quite a bit. But it is done with love and I give it right back. I am very proud of my Green Beret son. My other son too. He's a musician.
Sorry if that was a bit much.

Grandpa served in WWII and gave the best advice......never mess with ANYONE who handles your pay, your fuel/ammo, your food, or your mail. 70 years later it still rings true. Call us what you will, but give grandpa his due and proper.

Friendly ribbing I don't mind so much. The issue is when it goes beyond friendly ribbing and acutally becomes a superiority complex. There is no place for true "I'm better than you" attitudes. The military is a team. If one person on the team doesnt' do his job, the whole suffers. And that POG may actually save your life one day....

Well, yeah, there's some good reason infantry call "non-infantry" POG's - but I'm not certain infantry understands just how much "POG's" do in support of the infantry. But I'm certain I'm about to hear that Infantry doesn't need POG's.....

2 things: First, the term "POG" itself, is an acronym, standing for Personnel Other than Grunts, i.e. EVERYONE who isn't an Infantryman. That means literally every single person in the military who isn't an 11 Series in the Army, or a 03 series in the Marines. We can include Seals and the other combat SOF MOS's. I say combat, because now things like psyops fall under the Specwarfare umbrella, and they go around telling anyone that will listen that they are Special Forces. Yeah, try telling that to someone from Group, or a Seal operator, and see how special your face feels when they're done with you...

Second thing, and most important to this whole debate of grunts vs. pogs; grunt is also a military acronym. It stands for General Replacement, UNTrained. This term became became commonplace in the military lexicon during WWII, to denote the large amount of personnel being shipped to the various theatres, with little or no training. These individuals would then be issued kit and a weapon, given rudimentary training, and then tossed into the meat grinder. This is also the same period of time that birthed the Airborne vs. legs rivalry in the Army, as Airborne units were actually trained for some period of time, before being sent to their gaining unit. This is why I have never called myself, or any of my Infantry brethren for that matter, grunts. We are highly trained (at least on paper!), and have earned the moniker of Warfighter, as opposed to being a geek off the street, who has been basically handed a uniform and weapon and told to charge...

What it all comes down to is this; we are all members of a very elite brotherhood. We are the .45% of the population who had the balls to step forward and heed the call of generations past, to step up and take our place on the line, joining the pantheon of warriors who came before us. We are the very few who said, "I pledge my very life, if it comes to that, to defend my country and the citizens of it, to protect our laws, our culture, our ideas and ideals. To shed blood, and to have mine own blood shed, so that this Nation might be free for a while longer." The true gap between the Infantry and everyone else, is the false assumption that we, the brotherhood within the greater brotherhood, have our ranks filled with individuals who are only there because we didn't score high enough to make it into another MOS. This is a falsity. Some of the most highly intelligent, articulate, competent Soldiers I have ever met in my life were Infantrymen. We have to be extremely profficient at our jobs, as well as at least passably proficient in the jobs of several other MOS's. We are trained to be completely self-sufficient, up to a point. We have to have a broader skillset than just those laid out in the scope of our MOS; we have to be able to effect field expedient repairs on vehicles and equipment, we have to be able to run our own comms, we have to be able to find our own supplies, in the event of supply chain break-down. We are even cross-trained in other combat MOS's. We can call for fire, scout, conduct Anti-air operations, give and gather intel, control prisoners, and many, many other things that are not purely Infantry talents. It pisses me off to no end to hear supply clerks and the like sit around talking about how they are basically Infantry, because they went through some basic fireteam ops while in the field. When I was in Iraq, we spent weeks at a time out at our COP, running sometimes days long operations. We were eating MREs, sometimes only parts of one due to the majority of them having mold on them. We would come back to our FOB for a few hours to refit our vehicles, restock supplies, grab a quick shower if time permitted, and maybe, MAYBE! have time to actually sit in the chow hall for a couple of minutes and eat a real meal. The following happened in different ways many, many times throughout our deployment, but this one is the one I remember most, because we had just lost several Soldiers from our sister Company to an IED/ Secondary explosion; we came in after being in our sector for nearly 2 straight days, tracking down the individuals responsible. There were about 10 of us who went to the chow hall, to grab a quick meal and bring back food for everyone else. We are sitting at a table, still in all our gear, dirty, stinking, dead dog tired, some of us with blood still on our uniforms, when 2 females from another unit come in and sit at the table behind us. They are both in fresh PTs, and they are close enough that we can all hear their conversation. the first one started making comments about how bad we smelled, and then the second one said, and I quote, "My goal this deployment is to never have to change out of PTs." One of my Squad Leaders stood up so fast he flipped the entire table over when his chest rig hung up on it. 3 of us caught him pretty much in mid air, as he was about to do something that is best not spoken of, but we restrained him, and forcibly escorted him out of the chow hall. Every single one of us felt exactly the same way, in that moment, but he was just a little more worn thin than the rest of us. We made it outside and he broke down in tears, that some worthless piece of shit could have the nerve to say something like that. Not having a true front line during that conflict led to individuals thinking that just because they were in country, they were on the front lines. Being mortared is one thing; that has happened in every war in the 20th/21st centuries. However, closing with, and engaging the enemy, on his turf, face to face in direct engagements, is something completely different. Understand that we are indeed "One Team, One Fight", but also know that what we in the Infantry go through day in, day out, is something that would make the vast majority of people in support MOSs soil themselves. There is nothing at all to be ashamed of, because you are a mechanic, or a finance specialist, or supply, or any other MOS. You served. You did a job in service of your country. Be proud of what YOU DID. Don't think that not being Infantry cheapens your accomplishments. Don't think for a second that you are second class, because you don't get a blue cord, or a CIB, or the majority of medals for valor. Be proud of what you have accomplished, because at the end of the day, we do need you. We need you because our job is the job that haunts a man for the rest of his life. Ours is the job that gives you the highest chance/probability of seeing what your brother's insides look like, or your own. It is what keeps you awake at night, cowering in the dark. It is the job that wakes you up when you do sleep, screaming out someone's name who is no longer around. it is the job that gives you all those wonderful faces that haunt your every moment, waking or asleep. it is the taste of blood in your mouth, the smell of burning flesh in your nose, and the bone deep feeling of guilt that you carry with you, every day for the rest of your life. We don't have blue cords and CIBs, EIBs and such becaseu we think it makes us look cooler than everyone else. We wear them to identify ourselves to each other, and to show to others the individuals that you should probably not fuck with at the bar, or anywhere else for that matter. We wear them with pride; pride in ourselves, pride in those who came before us, and pride for those men, some of whom were much, much better men than we ourselves, who gave their lives doing what we do. It is not that we were too stupid to make it into another MOS; it is that we had a calling to join the hallowed ranks of the Infantry, to do the job that so few, even in our already small brotherhood of .45%, had the calling to do. We don't ask for your pity, as we have nothing but pride in what we do. We ask not for your praises, as there is nothing you could ever say to us to make what we do an easier burden to carry. All we ask is that you A) give us our space, and leave your offhanded comments to yourself, and B) never think that you could be us. If you think you can, then by all means, go to your career counselor and tell him or her that you would like to re-enlist with a change of MOS. and C) stop bitching that the Infantry gets to go to all the "cool schools", like Airborne and Air Assault. There is a reason for that; you don't NEED Airborne/Air Assault-qualified cooks, or finance specialists, or JAG personnel. These are schools to train us in different ways of getting from point A to point B, to close with and kill the enemy.

Damn, but that was quite the response. I make no apologies though, as this is something near and dear to me. I wear my CIB on me every day, be it on my hat, a lapel pin, or just on the tattoo on my side, above the list of friends I served with, who didn't make it home alive.