What Things Were Difficult to Communicate to Family and Friends About Your Military Service? Login & Share to Win!

How to explain the utter boredom and in an instant the sheer terror then the day long coming down off adrenaline.

The only thing I was unable to communicate with my family and friends about my military service was where I was other than a country. I could tell them I was in Hong Kong, the Philippines or Japan but not Vietnam or what I was doing there. Being a War Zone, info was not allowed to civilians. Everything else was not a problem.

It was difficult for them to understand that the mission takes priority when you end up missing family events at the last minute...

My brother in law who is a book publisher and his friend who wrote a national best seller asked me to write a book about my years in Army Intelligence. I told them I could not do this because I worked in high level intelligence and even my wife had no idea what my job was. I did write a book for them under my nickname "Bud" but it was about how the military is different than civilian life in that we signed a contract to abide by the policies and orders given. A military person can't refuse an assignment where a civilian has that option. The hardship of separation from your family is another where the wife has to take on the burden of keeping things running smoothly.
I tried to explain what it was like about loyalty and teamwork in the military and how important this was especially in combat where life long friendships are developed.
There is one thing though that those who spend 20 or more years in the military have to adjust to when they retire and work into civilian occupations. We think in black and white and no in between. Those in the military who treated those under them fairly and as a person, not a number likely had no trouble in the transition.

Where I was, how long I would be gone and what I was doing
ETCS(SS)

Wartime mission and tasking, drug interdiction involvement, inhumanity of things seen and experienced.

The loss of friends. The loss of a job. The loss of a way of life. The inability to find a job because of a disability rating of merely 10%. The depression that follows. The fall into drug usage just to get up in the morning and to go to sleep at night.
I've been clean from drugs since 1998..Just glad to be alive...

Trying to convey to my friends and family the importance of obeying AFR 35-10 (The regulation for dress and personal appearance) and other regulations-- and the importance of always being on time and placing the job and other duties above everything else. Many of my friends thought that these regulations were terrible and too confining! When I transferred to civilian life, I wound up with a better job than most of them did. I am grateful to my military background for a terrific civilian career and an even better retirement!

The moral, ethical, and professional dilemmas of why we had to turn some people away from our hospital because we couldn't treat them.

Nothing my family was very understanding.