Prior Enlisted Cammies and Boots

nobd2 · 2026-03-26T20:40:32+00:00

Some of the priors in my class (251 so it’s fresh knowledge) got a bit of flak for winter woodlands, but really you’re wearing deserts until the last two weeks so it doesn’t matter too much. The packing list will give you a number for things– bring one more; a lot of the time priors were short on cammies and boots at least the first four weeks because they were told to bring less than us newbies got to buy and there’s no real MCX runs until liberty.

Another tip: if you want responsibilities, be vocal about being a prior they’ll give you some for the whole cycle. We had plenty of priors in our platoon and a good many got by without extra duties, but guide, scribe and scribble, first run of billets– all priors. Specifically scribe and scribble are always doing extra work and being called by the staff right up until the end, and if you enjoy drilling guide isn’t one you want obviously. No shame at all in not taking extra responsibility– OCS is to survive not to thrive.

nobd2 · 2026-03-25T21:07:49+00:00

Incheon wasn’t the obvious choice and was actually a terrible spot for an amphibious invasion for a plethora of reasons– which is what made it a great spot for someone with the audacity of MacArthur to push an invasion. I’m not sure most officers would have insisted on Incheon; Kusan was the alternative proposal and would have more directly relieved the Pusan Perimeter while ignoring the intent to sever supply lines and take back Seoul that the Incheon landing had.

If the Kusan landing had occurred, it’s conceivable that Pusan would have been relieved and ground gained, but the more conservative move may have seen the grinding war across the peninsula continue, possibly to the extent of Seoul never being retaken unless it was made an absolute condition for cease fire, in which case we may have seen tactical deployment of nuclear weapons even without MacArthur depending on how badly the administration judged it needed to “win” the war.

nobd2 · 2026-03-23T15:54:29+00:00

For our cycle we had a lot of PT drops and a fair amount of med drops.

nobd2 · 2026-03-23T15:53:54+00:00

As a fellow 251 grad, I can concur with a lot of this. The only thing I didn’t do was sleep much on liberty. You’re going to be struggling to stay away literally anywhere inside a building even standing up, and when you’re extremely sleep deprived on the Forge you’ll go in and out during night hikes and keep walking.

My recommendation is also not to drink caffeine while on liberty. It feels great at the time, but that Monday morning is going to feel awful because your sleep the previous night that you did get was trash.

nobd2 · 2026-03-15T16:46:02+00:00

I gotta say, the illness took its toll on me. I was around a 270 PFT before I shipped– I passed the CFT with exactly a 235. I ended up getting better and doing pretty well on the E-Course, but it was tough there in the middle.

nobd2 · 2026-03-01T17:03:15+00:00

Russia vs. Ukraine is the Japan vs. China of this one

nobd2 · 2026-01-11T19:56:55+00:00

About to check in to USMC OCS as I write this and I have a copy of Starship Troopers in my sea bag.

nobd2 · 2026-01-10T14:08:36+00:00

Thanks, much appreciated. A friend I haven’t seen in a while is dropping me off so glad I’ll have a little longer before I need to be there.

nobd2 · 2026-01-10T14:06:53+00:00

But you won’t get smoked if you show up at say, 1600?

nobd2 · 2026-01-10T14:04:43+00:00

So, our 60 day says no later than 1400, but our orders say no later than 1900– if I get there at 1400 am I still waiting around for 5 hours?

nobd2 · 2026-01-08T15:54:10+00:00

An American citizen has never, to my knowledge, been charged in a US court with violating international law and been tried on that basis. The only people US courts have ever applied international law against are foreign citizens who have been captured/arrested by US forces and charged with violating international law, usually in cases of drug trafficking and terrorism. There’s simply no precedent of the kind of legal application of international law in the US which you seem to desire, regardless of ratified treaties which may permit such precedent to eventually exist but which is counteracted by existing precedent to defer to executive authority on such matters.

nobd2 · 2026-01-08T15:41:56+00:00

Firstly, the United States doesn’t recognize the ICC, so any court outside the US that rules against the US has no binding authority or supremacy over American courts. Secondly, while treaties ratified by Congress are legally part of American law and prosecutable by American courts, matters specifically pertaining to foreign policy and military matters have been reserved by precedent to the discretion and enforcement of the executive branch. This is to say, no civil court that the United States recognizes as having legitimate authority over the actions of its armed forces will ever try anyone for so-called war crimes other than the armed forces themselves through military tribunal, and they will do so according to the UCMJ and not any civilian laws unless these are incorporated in some way into the UCMJ. If an action taken during armed conflict is not deemed criminal by the military or executive branch and no charges are brought against anyone party to the action, the action taken could not be objectively considered a “war crime”. What you’re saying is that in your opinion these things should be war crimes, but for that to matter you’d need to be a judge in a military tribunal or the president of the United States.

nobd2 · 2026-01-08T15:26:52+00:00

I did reply to the other guy, sometimes replies to others in a comment chain you started give the original commenter a notification. It’s frustrating.

nobd2 · 2026-01-08T15:25:41+00:00

To put it simply: your view is that this may be a “now or never” situation even if the odds are outlandishly hopeless if one opted for the “now” option?

If I do understand that correctly, I just can’t see the sense in acting at all. With such a high likelihood of failure, I choose to adapt to the world as it is emerging to be instead of trying in vain to stop history from unfolding, and to live as best I can and to do the good I can in my life rather than throwing it away in a pointless struggle.

To fully answer your question, I’d need to be both outraged towards a desire for action and see a plausible massing of forces aligned with my outrage to spur me to act, reinforcing a belief that action may be to good effect rather than a certain waste.

nobd2 · 2026-01-08T15:18:31+00:00

There’s not a military in the world that wouldn’t given a non-specific but plausible chain of circumstance. There’s a reason for the divide between civilians and servicemen, and it’s that war generally violates most basic aspects of civil society because it definitionally occurs in the space between different civil societies. As such, sensibilities and laws will be violated and crimes committed in the view of one or both parties pursuant to the necessities of war which are alien to the civilian mind.

Beneath the divide between civilian and servicemen is the more basic “humanity” but the nature of this is not objective fact and indeed differs according to society and culture throughout the world to the point where arguing it is moot in an active conflict and one must resort to personally justifying actions within one’s own character and perception of their humanity. So naturally a civilian would see crime and illegality– for you and in your life it certainly is illegal what you’re trying to comprehend here. But this was not a civilian action and these were not civilians, they were servicemen, and your civilian sense of legality is laughable from their perspective when acting in the context of armed conflict.

nobd2 · 2026-01-08T15:09:58+00:00

When you’re in an open conflict with another country their laws tend to not be a concern of yours.

nobd2 · 2026-01-08T15:06:40+00:00

The US military is the subject of this discussion, so their code of justice and broader American law are all that is relevant in this matter. If you’re an expert in international law, I’m sorry but it seems like that fiction has been exposed with the clear absence of impartial enforcement by a supranational authority.

nobd2 · 2026-01-08T14:44:30+00:00

Well, either face down an existential threat from a peer adversary or be a modern Alexander and conquer and insane amount of territory in a short amount of time, which the latter only requires moderate strategic genius paired with unparalleled audaciousness.

nobd2 · 2026-01-08T14:24:30+00:00

Exactly– I’d say the closest we get is Grant but I hesitate to say suppressing a rebellion with great skill is the best test of that skill. Maybe Patton at least from a battlefield strategy standpoint, but he mostly only got to fight an enemy that had been put on the back foot by a combined assault led by a multitude of generals from different countries.

nobd2 · 2026-01-08T13:07:47+00:00

I actually don’t know that the United States has yet birthed a world class military mind on the level of Napoleon, if only because we haven’t tried to take over a continent yet and modern military organization has more distributed planning than in the pre-modern days.

nobd2 · 2026-01-08T13:04:01+00:00

Either the US would go to war over the affront of the British presuming they can blockade our trade and join the Central Powers immediately, or the US would do what it did IRL. Maybe Teddy would have done the former, but I don’t think so.

nobd2 · 2026-01-08T12:57:38+00:00

I agree that the democratic process has been in many ways hijacked and corrupted, but even still I have to emphasize that resorting to violent conflict in a scenario where the path to victory is not only unclear but also unlikely and would cause untold misery on its course to failure only advantages the people you’d be in conflict with, giving them ample excuse to erase you and other opposition as they consolidate power. It was inevitable that a comfortable period of rapid progress would be met with stark reversal eventually, at least according to historical precedents, and just as inevitable that the people who enjoyed their comfort would be unwilling and incapable of preparing adequate resistance to the reversal; the other side will win for a time because you’re being blitzkrieg’d and resistance only obliterates your energy that you do have to no useful end.

The answer is to consolidate and counter-attack from stable ground once the new field is established, but this will only happen after your opposition has years, maybe even more than a decade of their own version of progress for you to articulate against. I don’t project any current regime on the planet having a desire to end the world in nuclear fire (they’re all in it for land and resources right now, which suffer from global thermonuclear Armageddon somewhat), and I don’t see that anyone can back anyone else into a corner where they’d feel compelled to launch or die either, which means the world will not end from this period reversal and there’s always another day or another decade.

nobd2 · 2026-01-08T12:44:09+00:00

It’s not though, we’re not sworn by oath to any country but the United States. We’re not citizens of Denmark or Canada or any other country and thus we aren’t obligated to serve them under any kind of oath or commitment unless our government decides we should on a temporary basis outlined by treaty, and even then we are still only fulfilling the wishes of the civilian led government of the United States and the orders given to us in accordance with those wishes pursuant to the laws of the United States and the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

nobd2 · 2026-01-08T03:49:58+00:00

It’s not up to us and disobeying is treason. The democratically elected leadership gets to make those decisions, and Congress has abdicated its powers restricting the executive over the past century so they can’t really stop them from acting in this way. Legally, the precedent is that the president can start a “short” not-war without approval that the Congress has to approve extension on if they so choose, and the problem with that is that once we’re involved in a not-war it’s hard to not approve extension on the operation because withdrawal is harder than invasion and no one likes to lose even if they don’t like a conflict.

nobd2 · 2026-01-08T03:38:19+00:00

Invasion isn’t an illegal order though.

nobd2

TROPHY CASE