Comments on Israeli by Day, American by Night: Still Waiting For Something Real

Be careful what you wish for, Danny...

2009-04-29T19:44:00.000+03:00

Be careful what you wish for, Danny...

as long as u come home alive bro is all that matte...

2009-04-13T22:59:00.000+03:00

as long as u come home alive bro is all that matters! We love u very much

I find this post funny as you are are "tiring" aft...

2009-04-13T18:45:00.000+03:00

I find this post funny as you are are "tiring" after 6 months of training while I am at an institution where it takes 4 YEARS to get to the real army as an officer. We don't even spend all our time on the military part, we have most of our time on Academics which really sucks even more. So for me I am counting too till my distance ends, 39 days to go. It will be nice when our 327 days of distance are over. Your life can always be worse. I have been in the army almost a year and am no where near even close to where you are militarily you can take that as solace.

For me to keep motivated here I just think back to how excited I was to be where I am now and how hard I worked to get here. I know you must have been excited to get to go to the IDF and if you think back to that excitement you can draw off that excitement to keep yourself going. Some days will be dull, some will be painful but if you embrace each day as what it is they will suck a little bit less. Also you can tell your self, at least I dont go to West Point.

CDT PVT Mark
Class of 2012

Ever since I was in junior high, I wanted to be a ...

2009-04-13T15:49:00.000+03:00

Ever since I was in junior high, I wanted to be a submariner. I spent more time reading books about submarines than I did homework. So once I graduated high school, I joined the Navy with a guarantee for submarine school and off I went. After finishing boot camp and sub school, they gave me what I wanted....an attack submarine on the West Coast. Alright! Sea time! Port calls in the Philippines, Japan and Australia! Hunting Russians!

Then I got to Pearl Harbor and found out my boat had just begun an overhaul. Meaning she was going to be in the shipyard for a very long time. Over a year. No sea time. No PI, Japan or Australia. No hunting Russians. Just work, heat and dirt. NOT what I joined the Navy for. It was another fourteen months before I finally got to sea. After that I got plenty of sea time and went some places and did some things....and got tired of spending over 200 days a year underwater in a steel tube. The bright side of spending all that time in the yards was that I knew that class of submarine better than most because I had seen one torn apart and put back together. In the long run, it was beneficial.

So....why am I telling you all this? Weeelll....first of all, the grass ain't always greener where you're going. In fact, where you're going, there won't be much grass at all. Second, everybody has to pay their dues before they get to run with the big dogs. You're getting there. Use your training time to make yourself the best rifleman you can be. Your life and the lives of your buddies will depend on it because you are going to a combat zone and you might get shot at. Third? Well, you did ask for feedback and I love to talk. :)

Oh, one more thing. Much of my time in the active duty Navy was tough. You will have tough days too. But here I am at the tail end of my career, waiting on my retirement papers from the reserve, and I look back on those times with a lot of fondness.

Be safe, Private Brothers.

Karl Newman
ET1(SS), USN