Comment by snerbles
3 months ago
> One was a Marine who made a number of landings and was involved in a lot that “I wish I could forget”.
My grandfather landed at Tarawa. He only talked about privately, it to family members that were in the service.
> The doctor ... his description was that doctors, while they had rank, were largely left alone to their own devices to do what they needed to do. Rank wasn't really relevant to their daily lives.
From my experience, military doctors tend to be doctors that happen to wear a uniform. They already have the skills actually needed by the service (unlike most military jobs, where it's assumed that you know little to nothing of the job), the direct commissioning training is mostly so they can function and fit in that environment.
> military doctors tend to be doctors that happen to wear a uniform. They already have the skills actually needed by the service
Sure, most of them join either during med school or during residency, with Uncle Sam picking up the financial obligations.
Funny story - good friend was an army doc and we managed to both get time off at the same time/location. Hanging out along the ocean and come across a little kid that got hurt. So he goes into doctor mode and talks soothingly to the kid, who is very apprehensive. He says “I know you’re not so sure I’m a doctor. It’s because I haven’t asked your parents for their insurance info yet” and smiles at the mom and dad.
Later on he says that never dealing with insurance is one of the perks of being a doctor in the military.
> Later on he says that never dealing with insurance is one of the perks of being a doctor in the military.
Despite not being anything close to an MD, a social media app I use has determined that I am. I get recruiting ads from the Navy that says this, in effect: "Don't worry about malpractice or insurance, just your patient". It's a pretty good sales pitch, I imagine.
> "Don't worry about malpractice or insurance, just your patient". It's a pretty good sales pitch, I imagine.
If only the rest of government aspired to that. :)
13 replies →
Have you considered med school? Maybe the advertising platform knows something about you that you’re not aware of yourself.
Yeah the Marine talked openly about it maybe a handful of times with me, I got the feeling he left a lot out, even then they were never happy stories. I got the feeling he carried his experiences like a weight his entire life and he didn't ever describe it in any good terms, none of it. Didn't help that he lost his brother (also a Marine).
I think it’d be fairly odd to describe any experience in which you have actual combat experience in a positive light.
At least, my experiences talking with a combat medic and the weather corps couldn’t be more different.
My great uncle was a Naval supply officer in WWII, and wrote a bunch of letters to my grandmother. He never left the ship during battles, so he couldn't have had as intense a combat experience as others. But he describes his time at the battle of Iwo Jima, killing Japanese soldiers who were swimming at the ship with explosives, and watching people die as Japanese fighters strafed the decks. What was interesting to me is that he doesn't particularly characterize it in a positive or negative light, but mostly just as completely surreal. He several times says he felt like he was in a movie. Unfortunately, he died before I was born and he never wrote anything after the war was over about his war experience. So I don't know how the reflection of time effected his thoughts on it.