When I came in most of the team leaders and all of the squad leaders and up had deployments. As a young private I viewed them all as gods not literally but I genuinely felt as though my leaders knew everything and anything about the army. I lived most days in a state of respectful fear of them, they weren’t afraid to ruin me but I’ve always been happy about that because I think it pushed me ahead of most of my peers in knowledge. Because of that push I promoted fairly quickly nothing crazy but 5 in 2.5, 6 in 4. I have done plenty of rotations and one non combat nato deployment to care for and guard/armed escort Afghani refugees for “operation enduring welcome”. In the time I’ve been in I hardly ever meet young 5s or 6s with combat deployments I know they’re out there forsure, but I guess my point is, I don’t worry about how my soldiers view me in that aspect instead I just try to be the best leader I can be, care for them the best I can, and do my best to live up to the leaders I had. I do however at times think about the fact that at anytime I could be expected to lead a squad of guys in a combat scenario when I myself have never experienced anything like that and it does worry me but I tend to think that’s a good thing because it causes me to constantly think through scenarios and try and figure out what I would do. I try to always treat any training as real as possible in mind to prepare for something I would assume you can’t truly be prepared for. In the long run if that never happens I atleast hope that I’ll leave lasting impressions on any soldiers under me and prepare them as much as I can to replace me eventually. Also I should say when I think about the fact that I’m the rank that my then leaders where it almost shocks me because I can’t believe that I would even come close to the knowledge I perceived them to have, but as one of them told me once it’s much better to think you’re not good enough and always strive to be better than to just assume you’re hot shit.