What Things Did You Learn About Yourself That Were Unexpected or Surprising During Your Military Service? Login & Share to Win!

I learned that I could be something different than what I previously limited myself to. The thought of joining the military never even crossed my mind until 9/11. I learned discipline, but also how to have the confidence to rely on my training and my fellow soldiers. There were also darker lessons learned as a woman during my time in the Army. I also never expected to reach a higher level of pushing through difficult situations or physical injury. The military also taught me to look beyond the narrow-mindedness of nationalism and to be truly devoted to creating a more just and free world. It gave me the experience I needed to see that for myself. I really enjoyed my training and was always reaching higher for goals that I had no motivation to do prior to my service.

Not so much about myself, but what my dad endured in WWII as a member of the 101st in combat. While I was a door gunner and he airborne infantry, I gained a whole new respect for the man and other veterans of wars.

I found out that when a true emergency happens that I didn't even think twice about jumping in and helping out . I saw burned and mangled people at the Ramstein Air Show crash in 1988 and proceeded to load them in a Polizei Helicopter and a News Helicopter to get them airlifted to Landstuhl Hospital .

It shouldn't have been unexpected and it shouldn't have been surprising, but ...

I was a small town kid from the rural northwest. Tiny school. All the neighboring communities combined added up to a graduating class of fifty-five. Nearly a quarter of us enlisted upon graduation.

Amongst other things, basic training was a crash course in diversity (or, at least, as diverse as the country really got in the early 90s). I come from a predominately white, rural, northern community. My high school had minimal minorities (a few Hispanic families, probably some people with Native American blood, and I think only one Asian American (half or quarter), at least in my class.

Zero black students. The Cosby Show, hardly representative, was the closest exposure I got to a large swarth of America. Oh, and Mr. T. on the A-Team. And even then, I didn't watch TV much.

Were there even any POC in the books that I read? Outside of Huck Finn and a few other things from class, none that I recall. Maybe they were, but it was never explicitly stated so. YA fiction in small town libraries was all the Hardy Boys or The Black Cauldron or Nancy Drew or the like.

So I got to boot camp loaded up with unconscious biases, stereotypes, prejudice, and no small amount of animus toward other groups.

Sad to say it took until my late teens to realize that people are people regardless of skintone, regardless of rural/urban, regardless of so many other divides.

Military service did an awful lot for me -- not all of it good (I was in during the era of "Don't Ask; Don't Tell") -- but the very best thing it did was help me see and break the biases I had. Maybe college would have done the same, but considering that I most likely would have gone to a small, rural, northern college, maybe not.

Courage is not being fearless. Courage is being afraid, but doing your best because the others are counting on you.

I was only 19 (1981) and was in the Army during the Ronald Reagan years (cold war). What I learned about myself is I was a lot stronger mentally than most of my comrades. I hated working for dumb people apparently 'work harder not smarter' was the motto. I was 26 when I ETS'd and ready for what life had to offer. What I learned is there are dumb people everywhere not just the military!

You learn how to handle situations you never havr before or ever thought you could do. You certainly get to learn about other kinds of people, yes they may be different and possibly strange yet they're not really 'strange' and we are all the same - human beings. I learned that I am stronger and tougher than I thought before. I witnessed, seen, been thru and survived more than I ever anticipated or expected.
I also learned that I can change and adjust to scenarios when needed. I took responsibility and lived on my own. Military live is MORE than just following orders. You have to use your head in sudden situations and I learned that I can react when the situation requires it.
I found that I'm more open to the facts when they're presented to me. I'm able to learn newer ideas and much of what we were taught in school is a bunch of crap. You need to think outside the box, where you grew and went to school is not the world.

That I could run! I had never done that very much. Around the bases, maybe...a little neighborhood football...but as a teen and adult, never. Oh, and I could climb a rope, get over the top of "The High One", run-dodge-and jump, you say? Like a rabbit! I found I could gut it out...grit my teeth and handle a little pain...and that it felt good!!! Really good to come to the end, successfully. Gave me the spirit to do more!

How long I could go without sleep, How much COLD and Snow I learned to deal with.
I can not swim, And it seems to be the only thing that really scares me.
But when it came to jumping into the ocean. Out of a Black hawk for some training I was given a pass. Being in a leadership position I made the jump. I felt that no matter how this made me feel.
I could not ask my men to do something that I could not do myself.

That is one of the biggest problems we have in the Military. It's leadership's inability to do what they tell there subordinates to do.

I learned that I was more healthy than I thought and now after serving I will have lifelong physical and mental limitations. I learned that I could have a kid taken out of my custody simply because I served.