Someone a bit ago asked me what I miss the most about the Army. Although my initial intent was to respond with the usual "long hours, even longer deployment, and rapidly flucuating quality of leadership", I decided to go with the truth: I miss whoopin' ass.
During my stint in the Army, I was fortunate enough to spend 1.5 years as the Provost Marshal Operations Officer. For those non-Army types, this was essentially the "Chief of Police". I was responsible for the day to day running of all security forces on a military installation of about 24,000 people, massing about 40,000 acres. Given there were days this job was less glamorous then it sounds, it had it's moments.
Those moments were usually on the weekends or during a dry spell in the office when I'd gear up in Military Police crime fighting gear, hop in a patrol car, and go "fight crime". This was looked down upon by my leadership for generally three reasons:
1) Officers (I was a Lieutenant at the time) are usually expected not to do any type of manual work that Enlisted Soldiers do (patrolling is considered an Enlisted Task)
2) Most Military Police Officers hate law enforcement. Unfortunately, I joined the Army because I LOVE law enforcement.
3) I had the knack for getting into the worst crap imaginable, arresting it, and bringing it back to the station.
Given I've never had the opportunity to shoot at any one, guns have been drawn, batons have been swung, and pepperspray has been fired off. Military Police patrols are very dynamic due to the fact that 90% of patrolling is sheer boredom. While patrolling, the only real way to keep yourself amused is to actually look for trouble. Given this, should you yourself (because they were usually 1 man patrols) get into a something in a bad way, every bored MP in a 10 mile radius would drive through peoples houses to get to the action. Maybe not always to save your hide, but at least they'll be there.
My constant thought as I was charging either into a house first (which seemed to always happen) or when I was taking on more then one drunk, I could go in swing because I was confident I would have about a dozen battle hungry MP's there in less then 2 minutes. So all I had to do was survive for that time, and I was golden.
And believe me, there were a few times that I'm glad they were bored.
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