That was a great story. How did you as an Army guy get so much experience with Marines, Air Force, and Navy? You are the second person that mentions he was not impressed with Navy SEALs. The Air Force was using a laser guided method to 'mark' and hit the tank with ordnance. I think the method was in its infancy during the late 80s. I was in at about the same time you were in - U.S. Army. Didn't really mingle with Navy and Air Force until I got to USSOUTHCOM, a joint command. It was my last tour on Active Duty. The U.S. military is a true cross section of the U.S. population. Social, economic, ethnic, and educational background. In 20 years of service, I met very few soldiers and Marines who were truly 'dumb'. I attribute a lot of it to age and immaturity. Regardless of how dumb they were, I still gave them credit for volunteering for the military. I worked with U.S. Army Rangers and Special Forces. Those boys were 'sharp as a tack'. I met a few SEALs but never worked with them. I also worked with lots of soldiers who were not 'tabbed' and were also 'sharp as a tack'. By the way, the 'dumb' ones can be found in the enlisted and the officer ranks.
Well my first interservice experiences were with Navy and Marine personnel at Fort Gordon which is I'm sure you already know the home of the army signal corps, at that time in 87/88 they were introducing some new commo gear I think it was called "VINSON or VINSEN" that was some of the first (I believe, not 100% sure since I wasn't in the training program) digital encrypted systems instead of having to hook up the encoding device to the old PRC systems. Certain people from my AIT class were selected to go through the training, it was basically everyone that was being assigned to Ft Hood, some Marines and some sailors were there for it as well. The Navy people were fairly low key, some of the Marines liked to throw their dicks around and start fights, but that was squashed pretty quick. My impression of the Marines (during service, after service I met some real morons) wasn't so much that they were dumb, just they really drank the kool aid, I understand interservice rivalry but taking it to the point of trying to pick fights with people during duty hours was just stupid, saw it at Gordon and saw it at jumps school. The Marines are a fine branch and their infantry battalions and MEU I'd put on par with Ranger battalions, I just thought it was funny to find some POGs acting like he's Chesty Puller himself.
The second was in jump school, in which you meet everyone from everywhere, also met people from other countries that were in jump school and at the time the School of the Americas was still in operation. In fact during zero week one of the post duties I had to perform was cleaning up the barracks at the SOTA, lets just say lots of porn mags, and packaging for knives and guns that they must have smuggled back home. One group of SEAL candidates were even kicked out at jump week for vandalism of some of the murals around the airborne barracks. Really dumb move, go through all that training to screw it up like that. The Marines again, liked to start shit, instead of recovering with "Airborne" after doing push ups they'd yell "Sempre Fi" and the black hats would mess with them even more. I think I even told a story before how one Marine picked a fight with a little guy that turned out to be an excellent boxer, so you can imagine how that fight went.
The entire time I was in I was in the 18th airborne corps, but assigned to 8" artillery units (two- 1/14th and the 7/9th) which have no real practical airborne applications and we were never jump units, so I never understood why we were in the 18th, basically we were treated almost like a spare parts depot or fill ins when we weren't shooting the big guns. I think all the guns were sold the Egypt shortly after I got out as they were phasing out the 8" artillery guns, or so I was told. I was even told that the two units I was in were the last two 8" artillery units in the army. I hated being in an artillery unit as a commo guy, basically running telephone wire all the time.
As for interaction with other groups first at Ft Stewart which has the Ranger battalion out of Hunter army airfield which is in Savannah and Stewart being about 20 to 30 minutes away by beautiful scenic Hinesville (or as we called it Hineyville because it was the ass of the world), We did some things with the Ranger battalion, had a couple times had to run commo relays (again this was back in the late 80's/early 90's so it was the old UHF radio antennas to boost radio signals, I'm sure all this stuff is about as relevant as horse drawn carriages at this point), we also did coordinated drills with the Ranger battalion, occasionally some other units especially the military intelligence group out of Stewart. In a couple instances they used SEALs as the OPFOR, again they were really good at ambush but were not that strong at setting up defensive perimeters, as discussed with a lot of the Rangers. I'm sure a lot of that has changed since then especially with active combat experience. I also did some consulting on a few industrial diving jobs which were at Navy installations (this was after I got out late 90's and 2000) where the commercial divers all related stories how they were shocked at how the SEALS as divers were not as strong as they had expected, again it may have been a matter of reality over expectations. My final stint was at Bragg, which you basically almost couldn't throw a rock without hitting a SF guy and again I explained the FO encounter with the Marines and Air Force FACs with the laser designator (it was in its infancy back then and yes it impressed the hell out of me enough to think "I joined the wrong branch"). So that's how I had so much experience with the interservice groups.
As far as the "dumb" people in the army, remember I served in artillery units, I was also in regrettably the lowest level commo MOS (which at the time was 31K "combat signaler" or wire dog, I scored a 124 on the ASVAB at that time, was told I could do any job in the army and I chose that, I ended up being an honor graduate and I didn't do anything out of the ordinary or apply myself). When it came time for the annual MOS aptitude test I and one specialist scored higher than our whole unit of 31Ks including the NCOs and I'd only been in about a year and a half. Sadly our "top scores" were in the mid 80's. When I was in gun bunny, cook and "petroleum specialist" were to the best of my knowledge the only jobs you could get in the army without a GED/HS diploma. The rule was you had either six months or a year (I didn't have to worry about it so I didn't really pay attention) to get your GED. I was always assigned to HQ batteries, so you had the lowest intelligent combat MOS 13B, in a unit which had all the cooks, petroleum specialists, mechanics, medics and clerical people as well as commo and I was with the lowest on the totem pole of the commo people. Hence why I say I experienced a lot of dumb people in the army. Hell you might even say I was one of them by the company I kept.
I will say the SF guys were some of the ones that surprised me the most, I was expecting the stereotypical "badass" but when I was at Bragg and met a few of them, they were almost military nerds, definitely in good shape and bad asses but really technically proficient. They knew the spec books inside out, I remember sitting with two of them as they discussed the specifications of a Hellfire missile, all I could think was I've never even seen one of these, I just hope it has the little arrow pointing which end the missile comes out like the LAW rockets.
I did try to stay in, but wanted a different MOS, at that time they would only let me change to 13B, petroleum specialist or cook. So i opted out, at that time the only other service that was taking prior service was the Marines. I never thought to explore it again until around 9/11 but I had gotten engaged at that point, my soon to be wife had lost her job and I decided to stay with her instead, sometimes I regret it but often not after the whole WMD fiasco in Iraq and some of the things I saw there.
