E022 Myths About the Military Pt2

Key takeaway: We cover some basics about how people enter the armed forces as enlisted soldiers versus those who enter as officers. Randy describes how the different enlisted ranks and officers would work with one another. We get into some details of uniforms and badges, and this leads us into a discussion of the Q course and some of what Randy did in studying to become a medic.

Topics covered in this video: 

• The enlisted ranks and cooperation with officers
• Relative ranks, and how one moves up in the ranks
• Uniforms - what can you wear when
• BDUs, dress uniform
• What does one wear after service - hats, tattoos?
• What badges do people wear - Airborne badge, Ranger tab, Special Forces tab
• Q course, medic course

Transcript

Randy: 0:00

I did get to keep my dress uniform. I got to keep all my uniforms, I got to keep everything that touched my skin. So I got to keep all my, uniforms, all my boots and all my hats. So I have all of those and I gave'em to my son.

James: 0:17

Greetings, friends. I'm James.

Randy: 0:19

And I'm Randy. You're listening to The Passionately Wrong podcast where we challenge your assumptions, offer some different perspectives, and hopefully help you make better decisions.

James: 0:31

All right. So here's a misconception that, is, and maybe what you just explained, helps me understand it, the steps that one has to go through, including the training and the leadership development to become a sergeant Major, I think you said was the highest enlisted rank you can achieve, and what's the lowest officer rank? Is it a lieutenant?

Randy: 0:50

Uh, second lieutenant, second lieutenant. So the, in, in the Army,

James: 0:54

the popular myth is the second lieutenant is a clueless boob who comes in and tries to tell the enlisted men underneath him or her what to do. And the sergeant major knows 10 times better, but the lieutenant doesn't listen. And so there's conflict between the officer and the enlisted men serving underneath them, them just because maybe of the training that they got up until that point. But this, this idea that you have from outside the military, that the, the junior officers are clueless and tyrannical, and the enlisted, uh, people underneath them know better. Is that A true and B, is it a function of what you've, how long it's taken you to get to those respective roles when they come head-to-head with each other?

Randy: 1:33

I will say, Once again, it's a subset of society, right? You have bosses that come in that got put there for whatever reason, not necessarily for their ability that aren't very good bosses. They don't know what they're doing, and the people who have been doing the jobs underneath them for a long period of time actually are familiar. A lot more familiar. And I think you can see that in just about, just about everywhere. Ideally, they're choosing the right people for the right jobs, but I don't think that always happens. I don't think anyone thinks that. Now in the military, yes. Your second lieutenant will never probably, it's a weird, it's a weird dynamic because while the second lieutenant outranks the Sergeant major, He's never directly in charge of a sergeant major because, because the different ranks of officers are usually in charge of a different subset of, of, of people. So a second lieutenant and a first lieutenant are usually in charge of a platoon, all right? Which is 30 guys. And his counterpart, his enlisted counterpart, who's also responsible for the platoon, is a platoon sergeant, which is usually a sergeant first class, which is a E seven. So there's nine ranks, a sergeant major being an E nine. Okay? And it, and so when you have an E seven in charge of a platoon, that e seven's got. 10, 12, 15 years, you know, as fast as you can make an E seven and seven years. Um, doesn't happen. Most people take longer than that. 8, 9, 10, 11, 12. I've seen, seen that too. And some people retire as E seven s cuz they never make any more rank than that whenever, depending on how, how fast they got promoted and what, and what, you know, how much of a go-getter they get and what their profession is and stuff like that. So you have this E seven on purpose, who's got a lot of experience, who went through all the ranks and knows all the positions and knows he, it's like being a parent, right? Your kid tries to get away with stuff that you did when you were a kid. So you know what he is doing, you know, since you've spent 12 years and done every position, you know, where new guys. Are failing so you can, you can be there when they do fail and make them learn from it. You know, where guys try to get over and try to hide from responsibility and you intervene and the, and the lieutenant doesn't always know all that, so that's why you are his counterpart. However, ultimately, the, the officer is the one responsible for the failure of success of the unit. That's the way they, they do it, however, Usually unless the, uh, the platoon sergeant can prove that he told the officer not to do it, and the officer did it anyway, and then they failed miserably and someone got hurt or killed or, or, or something bad happened. Then usually the platoon sergeant and the platoon leader are the ones that go together, usually get punished together. Mm-hmm. because they're both considered to be in charge. However I've seen it where the officer's, the one that that takes the, that goes down and the enlisted guys like I did, not only did I, he, he did what I did right. Where I wrote that guy every week and said, this is what I'm doing, and the officer's like, I want you to prioritize this, and you're like, Roger that. But I really think we should do this. Like, no, do what I say, okay, I'm not gonna prioritize safety this week. And then someone rolls a Hummer and then you're like, oh, we did, you didn't let me inspect the Hummers like I wanted to, sir. You know? So now ideally they work as a team and I, most of the time I think that's true. And the second lieutenant is fresh outta college, or the, one of the academies or, you know, just got, just went to o c s because he was prior enlisted. That's your ideal guy. He already knows the enlisted world and, and so he doesn't, he only knows what now R O T C and Academy has enlisted people as instructors. Hmm. So ideally the officer is going to respect these guys cuz a lot of his instructors were, were enlisted and they gave him good advice on how to, you know, run, you know, listen to your platoon sergeant cause he knows a lot, but. You know, if you are responsible for the success and failure of the mission, so you need to make decisions based on all the input around you. So listen to your platoon sergeant, but make your own decisions, right? That's kind of how that works. And um, so, uh, I would say, you know, your officers. Normally, not always. Some of'em are really, really smart and they really pay attention. They've really got attention to detail and they know the job. If they, if they really are really good leaders, they'll know the job just as well as the soldiers. If they, if they, if possible, right. They'll dig in. I've had SF officers like, I want to know. Everything about explosives. I wanna know everything about Kamo. I wanna know everything about now. Are they gonna be, are, is anyone, is any of that officer gonna come over and do an amputation? No. Will he be able to assist me with the amputation if I g give, if he's given enough time to train him to be my assistant and make sure that he's, you know, a septic and everything like that? Yes, probably. All right. And, but I don't expect anyone to be doing an amputation except for the medics. Um, and, and I don't expect anyone to, you know, plan a big demolition mission. Like, Hey, we're gonna blow this bridge up. How, where are we? Where are the places we're gonna set the demolition? And how much demolition are we gonna need? And stuff like that. That's the duty of the demolition expert. Now, will the officer learn how to put the place, the demolition in that once you've identified the spot, will he know how to place it in there and get it ready to blow up? Yes. So he'll be able to assist with all that.

James: 7:13

I was just gonna say, when you're talking about the process that you go through as an enlisted person to move up the ranks from E whatever to E nine or Eve seven does a similar. Emphasis on training and leadership development occur as you move up the officer ranks? Yes. So can I assume a general must be supremely qualified? Because you don't get to that unless you read it. They,

Randy: 7:35

yeah, they do go, they go to command schools all through their thing. So the first and second lieutenant, first a second lieutenant's, usually a platoon sergeant, uh, a first lieutenant's, kind of like an, uh, uh, it can also be a platoon, platoon leader, sorry, platoon leader. So they're in charge of 30 people, A platoon for infantry, right? Mm-hmm. every, every profession has a different amount of people in a platoon. Okay. But, but for, I'm just talking infantry combat. There's 30 people usually in a platoon, you have a platoon leader and a platoon sergeant, an E seven, and an oh one second lieutenant, or maybe an oh two. Okay. All right. The next level is a captain, which is an oh three for an officer. He's in charge of a company, 200 people. His counterpart is an E eight, which is a first sergeant. All right. And that guy's already been a platoon sergeant, and he is also done staff work. And because it doesn't get promoted to First Sergeant, right after he takes a platoon, he does staff work and other jobs, and then he gets selected above. I mean, we're talking about top 5% of the army make it to E eight. Right? Something like that. So, so they make it until they make it to a First Sergeant, and then they're, they're counterparts, the captain. Then you have a major, which is usually a staff guy and a lieutenant. Colonel's in charge of a battalion. All right. A battalion is three to four companies. So we're talking six se 8,000 people. You know that he's in charge of his counterpart's, A sergeant Major. Hmm. All right. then he gets, then the colonel is, can be in charge of a, um, like a regiment or division, things like that. And that he's in charge of like, Three or four battalions, and now he charge like 5,000, but his counterpart is also a sergeant major, but a sergeant major who has already been experienced at a battalion level, and then you can go up from there. Right? So basically once you get to battalion level, that's the sergeant major. And then the sergeant major is gets, he doesn't get, he never gets any more promotions or anything like that. He just, he has to have experience here before he can serve here, before he can serve here, before he can serve here.

James: 9:40

This may be a dumb question, but is there any way to shortcut the process? Can you come in, as a, at a higher level, does someone get a political appointment? Is there any way for there to be a senior? Either enlisted person or officer who didn't come up through the ranks.

Randy: 9:56

So, so some, some, usually the enlisted go through the ranks. Mm-hmm. Right? Unless they transfer from another service and they may have another deal. Uh, they may have a deal doing that. Uh, but that's like, those are unique things that happen. Um, the, but off, like captains or, I'm seeing doctors may come in at a higher rank depending on their contracts and stuff like that. Like a neurosurgeon coming out of medical school after he did his fellowship for five years and his blah, blah, blah. You know, he's already 30. They may say, okay, you're a lieutenant colonel, or whatever. Because really what the, when you're talking about the medical service in the military and the lawyers too, you're talking about. Because you're, you're, because they're not really in charge of anyone, right? They, they, they're not running a formation and saying, all the nurses do this. You know, they, they're, there's, there's, there's the head nurse. Just like in a normal hospital, there's a head nurse running the nurses, then there's the doctors doing the doctors things, and the nurses work with the doctors and they figure it out. They do their thing, right? But he's not like running a, he's not like a, did you do your PT today? Did you, you know, fill out your paperwork? There's other people that do that for, that are in charge of that stuff, so, So, uh,

James: 11:10

it drives pay for certain professionals who've put in, you know, eight or 10 years of training, you're gonna wanna find a way to pay them, which means giving'em a higher rank, even though that right didn't happen the same way that other people,

Randy: 11:20

right. And, and doctors will get promoted faster than infantry guys just because they're, they, they are, they're out. If they've got out, they'd get more pay. So you're trying to keep'em in for the 20 years at least. And that's why they get big bonuses. They get, they'll get, they'll get, they'll be at a certain rank, but they'll get like a hundred th depending on if they're a neurosurgeon, they may get a hundred thousand dollars bonus at the end of the year to keep'em around and stuff like that. So, um, so that's all that, I don't know how that works cause I never was obviously in that, but I've heard it, heard about it and seen it and things like that. Um, the enlisted guys can, so when you come in the military, if you, if you're a boy, if you're a a, um, what's the highest of Boy Scout? Could. Eagle Scout. Yeah. If you're an Eagle Scout, you can come in, come at at the fourth level at as a specialist, an E four. You can skip all the privates and come out as an E four. If you do at least two years of college Rati, you can come in as an E four. If you do three years of high school rati, you can come in as like a E two or something like that. They changed it every year, but there's a bunch of little things like that. Did you come in as, I came in as an E three. I had a year of college.

James: 12:28

Okay. All right. So this has been helpful. Um, and I have one more question and I want you to end with Randy. Um, and it might take you a few minutes to answer it, but, um, for me it is an illustration. This whole discussion of almost certainly the superficial information we have about any topic is gonna be exactly that. It's gonna be superficial, it's likely gonna be wrong. And therefore, if you wanna avoid being passionately wrong, you should at least keep in the back of your mind a little. Open point that says, you know what, there's detail, there's nuance. Just like there is with any job, any profession, any topic. If you talk to somebody who actually knows it, you're gonna learn a lot. So don't assume, just ask a few questions, right? It's much easier than trying to be well, passionately wrong. So the, the last point I want to ask you about is something you mentioned earlier, but I want to add on it, and that is, you said if you, you know, get the expert shooting, uh, or you, you know, whatever past the test, you can get a, a badge you can put on your uniform. So this is a two part question. One is what you see a, a general standing up in, in some public setting, and they've got a, a uniform on and it's fast tuned with badges and ribbons and colors. Those all mean something, but I have no idea what any of them. Any of them at all. Um, so what would you see on someone's uniform? Um, and this, the other part of the question is when and where can you wear what uniforms? You have a dress uniform, I guess, what's that good for? And then you have, I guess, your other uniform. What do you actually wear when you are on base? Are you wearing civilian clothes, military clothes? And, you know, the third, the final part of this question is, you know, I've been flying more again, and every time in the US airports, the pre-boarding goes according to their certain priority. And the very first one they're listing now is, uh, active military in uniform. But I've never seen anyone actually get on a plane as such. When are you as a military, you know, an actor serving military person allowed to wear your uniform out in public? And what sort of uniform can you wear? So maybe answer me some uniform questions. This isn't a misconception so much as I just don't understand the rules.

Randy: 14:37

All right, so first of all, Every service has different uniforms, which is, in some cases it makes sense because they have different uses for it. And in some cases it's, it doesn't make sense. And they should probably save, they could probably save a lot of money if everyone just used the same color, uniform, right? So when I came in, um, we were, everyone was wearing the bds, which were the camouflage things. And then when we went to, when we first started going to Afghanistan, we had the DCUs, the desert uniforms, and then somebody thought it was a good idea to buy. The, uh, acus, which were did, which with the camouflage didn't match anything. It was retarded, and someone, someone made a lot of money off a really stupid idea, and everyone in the world thought that everyone was like, what are you trying to camouflage? What are you doing, Stu? And then they just started adopting the last five or eight years, the O C P uniform. So, um, so these are, these are the camouflage uniforms with the little, you know, kind of baseball cap kind of thing. And those are your everyday uniform for most people. For most people, that's what you wear every day. You, if you're sitting at a desk doing HR stuff, you'll put that uniform on after you do your physical training, and then you'll work nine to five and take an hour out for lunch and you'll be in that uniform, um, depending on what's going on in the world. And, um, You know, on the base, the base commander's guidance, you may or may not be able to go off the base in that uniform. You know, there was a time when you could wear your uniform, that uniform on a plane because after nine 11, they thought if they saw more military people on the plane, they would be intimidated and they wouldn't try to blow it up, crash it, or whatever. Um, then there was, then they went back to, you can only wear the dress uniform on the plane if you want to wear your uniform. And then they got to, Hey, we don't want you to wear any uniform because we don't want you to, to, to stand out and make yourself a target. So it, it depends on, you know, the atmosphere and the arena of what's going on as far as if you, what you wear off the base. Usually the, they, we have, um, the Navy has a crap loading. They have like 10 different uniforms. I don't, I never understood what, what they wore when, where, but most of the time it's dictated by the person in charge of you and he says, Hey, everyone needs to be in this uniform for this ceremony, for this function. Um, like I said, bdu are usually the normal. For everybody unless they're working. Like my last job was, um, at a very high level where we worked with a lot of ambassadors and foreign generals and things like that. So it was accepted that you wore your dress uniform all the time because you were expected to wear, you know, kind of a suit level thing, which is what the dress uniform is supposed to represent. And it's a funny, it's funny because we were allowed to wear our BDS as military people when we weren't expecting a diplomat or, or a foreign general. And the, the dress code for the civilians that were working, I had about 50 50 civilians, uh, military where I worked, their dress code was, you know, suits. And there was always this complain. That, Hey, if we have to wear suits, then you should have to wear your dress uniform because that BDU uniform is not at the same dress level as a suit and we have to get these cleaned and we have to wear these hot things all day in the, in the Italian heat, which, cause I was in Italy at the time, and you get to wear, you know, something that's just kind of, you know, it's basically jeans and a t. I mean, cuz this is, this is the same uniform that, you know, I would inspect my Hummer before I go drive it, you know, I get underneath it, check the oil, you know, this is the same uniform that I would use to go do an obstacle course. You know, so, you know, why would you be able to wear that uniform that you use for everyday jeans and t-shirts and then use it every day if I'm required to wear a suit? And there was always this conflict of, you know, how can you require me to have this standard of dress and you're wearing that. And we'd always go back and forth and that and stuff like that. Um, so, uh, when you would have, um, special functions like dining, dining out, where. They would, uh, they would have, um, military funds would pay for a big ball, a military ball or something, and you would be required to wear a dress uniform. And there's different levels of dress too. There's the long tie, the bow tie, there's the, the, the nice blue jacket with the, you know, big things down the sleeves. And so those are, but the, you're not required to, to buy all those, especially as an enlisted guy. You only ha you get issued your dress uniform and you get issued four of your camouflage uniforms. And then every year you get a uniform, uh, a uniform allotment of so much money. And you're required to maintain, like if you're, you start wearing out your uniforms, you're required to wear, buy a new uniform with that money. Or if, uh, there's a change in the uniform, like we're buying, we, we all get new dress uniforms like we did every three or four years, then you have to buy a new set of those with this money. And it was about three or$400 a year I think, something like that. And so if you didn't have to buy anything that year, you know, then you could spend on whatever you wanted. Just knowing that at some point you were required to maintain your uniform. And if it started getting all stringy and raggy you had to buy a new one. If your boots started getting, you know, falling apart, you had to buy new boots and that that was your uniform. If you took care of your stuff, it would last a little longer. But ultimately you're, you were required to use that money to maintain your uniform and there's no reason why you should have a ragged uniform cuz you're getting, the army is giving you money every year to do that. That Did that answer all your questions?

James: 20:48

it answered part of them, what the uniforms are, where you wear them. the badges and the metalists I still want to hear about. And then maybe a related question as I hear you talking, which is, Maybe this is a two part question, we'll come to it afterwards. I wanna understand, do you wear any of your stuff now that you've retired? Did you take your camouflage stuff? And is that part of what you wear on the way to the gym? or do you have to give it back? how does it work? is it acceptable to wear it? Is it weird to wear it? Do you have special stuff from the, your special forces that only other special forces people would recognize? You know, I, I, I can analogize a little bit to runners, even though I know it's a totally different thing. If you finish the Boston Marathon, you get a special jacket and other Boston Marathon runners would know it and recognize it. So you totally can spot another marathon running nerd by virtue of what they wear in their private time. Either their shoes or their hat or their jacket. Can you identify other soldiers or former soldiers based on what you see them wearing in their private time? And would you do that or you understand what I'm asking?

Randy: 21:52

Yes. So, um, I'll, let me address the retirement thing. I don't know, I think I'm allowed to wear my uniform for events. Like if I'm asked as a guest speaker, I, I would have to look, I don't, I don't know the answer cuz I don't plan on ever doing that and I don't really care. Um, so I don't know the answer to wearing it after I get outta the military. I do have my uniform. I mean, the only problem is that the uniform I had when I got out is probably not useful now because the dress u they probably changed. In fact, I know they changed the dress uniform since then. So I would have to either, if I really wanted to get involved, I'd have to get a new one and I'm not sure I wanna spend the money on that. but your old one, Well, the old one is it, it, it, no one, it's not being worn by anyone. I mean, it's, it's, I mean it's, so, so what they would do is they have an expiration date on those, on that uniform, and then after a certain date, you have to wear the new one. Ah-huh. Now, because I got out with the old one, would I be able to wear it? Maybe. I don't know. I, I don't really know. I never looked into that, so I don't really know. I did get to keep my dress uniform. I got to keep all my uniforms, I got to keep everything that touched my skin. So I got to keep all my, uniforms, all my boots and all my hats. So I have all of those and I gave'em to my son. He may be able to use'em for a couple years. Um, uh, but he's a lot taller than me, so he probably won't ever be able to use'em to tell you the truth.

James: 23:20

you didn't wanna keep the hats, for example, and wear those around to.

Randy: 23:24

Well, um, first of all, I live in Europe and I probably didn't want to, don't wanna draw attention to me. And even if in the States I probably didn't really want to draw attention to myself either. I didn't like the word that the ball caps, I never wall bought word ball caps. Anyway. I am of the opinion that the reason people, you know, lose their hair early is cuz they wore ball caps and they didn't allow sun to get to it. And they had all that, they were, all that sweat was clogging their pores and that's why they lost their hair. And I, as you can see at 55, I have some good hair still and I wore my hat as least as possible. so for

James: 24:00

getting that, so are you, I identifying yourself as a, you know, green Beret ranger, do you have tattoos? Do you just put it under your shirt and you don't?

Randy: 24:10

I don't have a ta, I don't have a tattoo either, so I, I'll get to that. Hold on.

James: 24:14

You're blowing up my misconceptions about the military here.

Randy: 24:18

A lot. A lot of, a lot of it's funny though, cuz you, you li you spend enough time in the military, you see the, the rhythms, like there was a mo, there was a time there was a new guy in charge and he said no one can have tattoos. You know, you can't have sleeves, you can't have a, a wedding ring tattoo. You can't have anything below your forearm. And anyone who already has it, is grandfathered in. But no, who came in can get new ones and. Um, then they would say certain jobs weren't allowed to have it. Like maybe, I think for a while Delta force is like, no tattoos. You can't even apply if you have tattoos. Cause they didn't want any marks to identify you with and things like that. So it, it's a, it's a rhythm. It depends on who's in charge and how much. Everyone's forgot what happened 20 years ago because when they made that rule for the tattoos, the whole army rebelled and, and re and recruitment went way down. And they're like, oops, uh, okay. We take it back, you know, but I never got a tattoo. I never found anything I wanted to live with for the rest of my life. So I never put anything on myself. Um, the, the badges, so for the Army, probably for almost every service, the most, um, The, the, the most common and most well recognized badge is probably the airborne badge, which is right put right here on, on this side and on on your left breast. And it's a badge that has like a parachute on it. And that means you went through airborne school and your airborne qualified, okay? And you're borns, parachuting. Parachuting, right? You went to the three week parachute school and you, at one time you were qualified. You lose your qualification after three months. if you're not in a unit that requires you to jump all the time, then you'll just have this badge, but you won't jump again. And, and then if you don't jump within a year, then you become unqualified. You have to go through a refresher course in order to jump out of an airplane again, if you ever want to, or you, you go to another unit or something that allows you to jump or something like that, and you get an extra, you get extra$150 a month for jumping on airplanes. So for a, for a guy that's, you know, you're making$2,000 a month, that's another 10% of your pay raise kind of thing, if you wanna do that. Um, probably the next most recognizable in common is the Ranger tab, which is a, it's basically a half moon shape that goes right here on your shoulder, on your, your left shoulder. And that means you went to ranger school and ranger school. It changes every couple years, but it's usually between eight and 10 weeks long. Um, and it usually has three phases, what's called a city week, a mountain phase, and a jungle phase. And, um, jungles takes place in, in Florida and the mountain phase takes place in Telan, Georgia and the mountains. And then the other one takes place in Fort Bragg. And at one point they had a desert phase, which they discontinued right before the desert war for some reason. Yeah, It was really bad planning. But anyway, um, I went to the one with dead desert phase, um, and that was in U Utah. So that, that's a very common one. It's the premier Leadership school of the military. Uh, you teach how to lead people when they're tired and hungry and don't wanna do,

James: 27:52

when you say common, I think you mean recognizable. Not that a lot of people do it

Randy: 27:55

because you're Yeah, it's, it's, so, there's a lot of people that go to Airborne School that never jump at airplanes after they go to Airborne School. They got it as part of their, it was kind of a incentive, like, Hey, I'll, we'll, we'll say to Airborne School if you join right now. And they're like, yeah, yeah, yeah. But you only jump those five times and you never jump again because you're never in a unit that jumps. And Ranger school is a leadership school, so it's very most recognizable probably is the tab that goes right here. A lot of people, a, a lot of infantry, combat, um, force officers will almost all always go there. Senior off, senior enlisted that are. Uh, sergeants and above that, are in infantry units and stuff will go to it. Sometimes, some, some of the other services go to it. It's considered if you go through it, you're supposed to be come out of there and you're like, you're squared away. You're a good leader. You know how to give articulate instructions. To follow up on, on your su on your subordinates and make sure they're doing the right thing to standard and that teaches you, uh, how to do this in high stress situations and make sure you can get the work you need out of people when you need to. the next one would be the Special Forces tab, which means you went through the Green Beret course, which is anywhere from a year to 18 months, depending on what job you end up getting and that, and so those are all recognizable and pretty much any service, we'll see those. And um, and then you have other, there's a,

James: 29:25

sorry, did you say the Special Forces is a year to 18 months, a lot longer than Ranger uh, school then? Yes. Why is it so much longer?

Randy: 29:35

Because a ranger school is, teaches you a skillset, leadership skillset, and, uh, the. Q course, we call it the qualification course, teaches you a, a job like you become, you. When you go to the Special Forces Medical course, you're basically a emergency trauma doctor. I mean,

James: 30:01

so does this mean less people and probably a lot less people go to Yeah. Q course compared to a ranger school.

Randy: 30:08

Yes. if for no other reason, then it's so much longer, right? Yeah. So, you know, a ranger class starts every two weeks, I think, or something like that. All right. or maybe every month at least. I don't know if it's every month or every two weeks. Probably every month. There's probably 13 a year or something like that. the Q course probably starts, maybe they. Three or four a year that start and then they have a, 50% failure rate or something depending on the profession. Like the medical course has like a 75% failure rate, I think, or something like that. I'm kind of grabbing these numbers out of my head cuz it changes every year, but it's pretty high. I mean, I failed, I failed the first time. I had to go twice to the medical course. But literally you're learning a college level, a m p class, like a gross anatomy class in, in six weeks, eight hours a day.

James: 31:00

There's a little bit. I mean, that's one of the misconceptions as well, this sort of, um, macho or crazy, expectations required to, to finish these courses. it's not for the faint of heart.

Randy: 31:12

No. I mean, the medic course is like some serious, like, like the reason people fail is because they didn't do well in college and came in the Army, or they didn't want to go to college, and now all of a sudden they're taking like, compressed college. No, seriously, I remember being two months into the course, I just gotten like, today we're gonna learn the bones of the body. There are 206 bones of the body here, hair, but memorize them, you know? And then, uh, then for two days you go, you, what's this bone? What's this bone? You know? Oh God. And then, six weeks later you're looking at a cadaver. With little, just like the movie Gross Anatomy with Matthew Modine with pins in it, and you're, and you gotta ch you got a clipboard and you're like, okay, that's the liver. Uh, number four is the liver. Number three is the spleen. Number two is the, what is that? I don't know what that is.

James: 32:04

how well do you remember that stuff now? Just as an aside, so it stuck with you or how much of it?

Randy: 32:11

So I guess the real question is, do I need to know the names of all 206 bones to do first aid, to do an amputation? Or do I just know, need to know the procedures, what to be worried about, how to stop infection, you know?

James: 32:24

So you're saying you remember useful things?

Randy: 32:27

Well, most of our training as this, as a special forces medic was oriented around trauma. Okay. Mm-hmm. however, We got a crapload of medicine classes, like, you know, what are the signs and symptoms of like, really rare diseases or even common diseases, and how do I tell the difference? Does he have malaria or does he have, you know, whatever And, and what, and so I have to like kind of differentiate it. And, and they also teach me how to use all my medical books. I have a library that comes with me and eventually I had a computer. So, you know, you didn't, you didn't have to remember everything, right? I had to remember it for the test, but Right. But, but

James: 33:06

afterwards you had a, a, right, like for lawyers, you gotta remember a crapload of stuff for the bar exam, but afterwards you would never do something from memory. You'd look it up.

Randy: 33:13

Right. And that's the point, right? You, you're familiar with a lot of stuff. You're like, I think there's this thing that starts with an s, you know, and then you look and they've got so many great books now that you look at the signs and symptoms and it helps you zero in, or you type'em in a computer net program now. And it, like, it could be the following things and then you just kind of rule'em out by, by doing labs and stuff like that. So, um, the fact that you can. Differential diagnose. You know, you can say yes, you can say, Hey, you can, you can do a physical exam, ask the right questions, like where's the pain? When did it start? How long has it been going? What does it feel like? Blah, blah, blah. And you can zero in on the problem and not ignore other things that are going on system systemically with the body. And then come up with five possibilities, rule'em out with different labs and come up with the most probable. And then not, not to mention, we always have, we have doctors. I, I'm a phone call away, especially nowadays from a doctor in the rear, a surgeon like, Hey, I got this, this guy's pissing blood. These are the things I, you know, and I had this problem with this guy was pissing blood. And I was like, he, he, he came to me, I'm piss of blood. I was like, a little bit of blood, a lot of bit of blood. And he holds up this Coke bottle and it's like bright red. I was like, oh, okay, so I'm like, all right, so then we do a history. I do a different, and then I called the doc back in the rear cuz this is serious. And I'm like, Hey man, so this is what I think it is because of this, this, this, and this. He's like, all right, did you check this? And, and I have, I have a bunch of lab shit too. I have like, I'm gonna draw blood, I stick it in this thing. And I'm like, cause I don't have a whatever those cent centrifuge. I don't have a centrifuge. I am the centrifuge, future And then I'm look into that mixer. That's right. And then I'm like putting it on a slide. I'm like, okay, there's uh, so many, you know, blood, red blood, red blood cells per, per so many. And that means it's normal. That means it's above or below. And I'm, so, I'm doing all these things by myself. So it's really. It's, We'd love to hear what you think, so please comment on the show with your thoughts. We read all of your comments.

James: 35:17

Thanks for joining us, and thanks for subscribing. See you next time.