The best boss I ever had in the Army was a woman. She was a dinky little fireplug of a thing that wouldn't have had a prayer staying with a strapping lad like me humping a ruck up a hill, but otherwise she was fabulous.

Re. USMC Officer career assignments. I didn't go talk to the Marine recruiter about an upgrade from SGT to 2LT until my last semester of college. He said that I'd need to wait a year. He also told me about how little control Marine Officer Candidates had re. their careers. That made it clear that I could do pretty darn well in Marine OCS, yet end up as a Personnel Officer.

The Army told me that my career would be based on the "needs of the service" so they weren't going to give me a choice either. So I told the Army that the only way I'd xfer from the Marines to the Army was if they guaranteed me Infantry, Airborne and Ranger School, in writing on my contract. They told me "not possible, we don't do that, sorry". I walked out, figuring "what the hell, I wanted to be a Marine officer anyways, so no loss".

A week later the Army called me back and said "ok".

At Army OCS there was career choice chaos. About half of my class was prior service. Most of them were really shit-hot folks, many from Combat Arms, and some with Ranger and SF backgrounds. Almost no one got the career they wanted. The SF guy was turned into a tanker. None of the guys with Ranger Infantry guys got assigned to the Infantry. Jesus christ, if I hadn't thought to require my career to be in my contract, I'd have ended up the LT in charge of the dining facility.

Later, immed after the Army school for LT's, I spent a week in the USMC counterpart. I had an old Marine Corps buddy that was going thru their system just like I was the Army's. It was huge HUGE fun to spend a week in their classrooms, in the field, and in their PT environment, where every waking moment was spent measuring how much moxie the Army guy had. Geeze that was fun.

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"If only he had used his genius for niceness, instead of Evil." M. Smart