A few months ago I shared that my nephew Luke had joined the Army National Guard.\u00a0 On June 7th, he graduated from Basic Training and is now, as stated a few times during the ceremony, a soldier.\u00a0 By the time this posts Family weekend will be over and he will be back on base starting AIT training to become a scout.\u00a0 He will graduate from that program in late August.<\/p>\n
Obviously when you join the military you are a soldier.\u00a0 But it scares the everloving shit out of me to think if Luke that way.<\/p>\n
Luke’s troop has a Facebook page, and they frequently post photo dumps showcasing all the different types of training they have been doing.\u00a0 Hand to hand fighting, marksmanship, obstacle courses, tactical maneuvers, the list goes on.\u00a0 Obviously these are skills for combat situations.\u00a0 You don’t need to know how to safely use a hand grenade if you are a radiology technician.\u00a0 There’s no need to know how to assemble a gun in 57 seconds if you are a claims adjuster.\u00a0 \u00a0Only soldiers need these skills.<\/p>\n
When you read about National Guard troops assisting in flood relief efforts they aren’t usually called soldiers.\u00a0 When Guard members go off for their monthly\/ yearly training we call them “weekend warriors”.\u00a0 We don’t call them soldiers.<\/p>\n
Soldiers go to war.\u00a0 \u00a0And I can’t bear to think of Luke doing that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A few months ago I shared that my nephew Luke had joined the Army National Guard.\u00a0 On June 7th, he graduated from Basic Training and is now, as stated a few times during the ceremony, a soldier.\u00a0 By the time this posts Family weekend will be over and he will be back on base starting AIT training to become a… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4937,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"{title}\n\n{excerpt}\n\n{url}","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[25,27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4936","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bright-shiny-objects","category-its-all-love"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t