Which means more to you: your badges, tabs and medals? Experiences? or Buddies?

Buddies

Buddies is the most important thing, they the one bring you back up,motivate you, and more.

Friends is one in a life time, Badges and award you can always earn it.

Lifetime friends combined with memories shared are PRICELESS!!!

Always buddies first. That bond is something you can never explain to somebody that has not been there.

Then Experiences. In Iraq I lived in the City of Babylon. How many other people can say they have stood in the the place that Alexander the Great had once ruled from?

I only felt like I ever earned a couple of the medals I was given. The rest were freebies. So they never really mattered. The really cool stuff I did I never got anything for anyways.

Experiences, by far.

Medals are nice, but they are not always given to the people that deserve them. I have two problems I am working at the moment of people that were in combat and didn't get what they earned. It is so hard to do this AFTER the fact.

Either way, I always knew what I did and anything external was nice. But, I knew what I experienced and what my fellow servicemen experienced. That was enough for me.

For me, the medals are nice, but honestly only have 1 that means anything to me. The rest of them are just there.

The battle buddies, while a necessity at the time, seem to vanish after the fact. There may be a select few that you stay in contact with for a while after the fact, but not forever. Personally I only have 1 that I have remained in contact with throughout the years.

The experiences however remain with you forever. These experiences come from not only the job, but the different cultures you interact with, both with the locals as well as those battle buddies you met along the way. These experiences are what determines who you are as a person, as they develop your skills and personality.

As somebody else mentioned, all of these are tied together. The battle buddies effect your experiences and the ribbons tell the story. If I had to pick the most important of these though, I would have to go with the experience. (good or bad, depending on the battle buddies)

How about all of the above, somewhat equally.

Without battle buddies, you wouldn't likely have the experiences. Medals, tabs, and badges can be replaced whereas battle buddies cannot. And if the chow means more to you then well that is entirely too sad. Battle buddies are an irreplaceable part of military life. It sucks when you don't have someone that you feel you could trust with your life, but when you do find those people, it's like living in a whole different world.

Definately buddies and experiences in that order. I enlisted in 1986 and went straight to Europe after training. I stil have friends from there that I see regularly and now my family is friends with.

The experiences, good and bad made me who I am today.