Originally Posted by
criticalbench 
I couldn't even imagine. Being a nurse working with pre-mature babies, when I loose a baby during my
shift, whether its my patient or not, it screws you up both physically and mentally for some time.
These guys see people killed and know there is a good chance, there next. How do you keep moving forward knowing your time can be over any second now.. with zero warning.
God bless all the vets, active service, and all!
Mike
This is how I equate it...
Several years ago I stopped by a buddies house 'cause we were going to go out drinking. He was working on his masters at the time and was balls deep in his thesis. I asked if he was ready to go and his reply was "yeah, just let me knock out a few pages really quick." He was like 40 pages in. That blew my mind. It sparked a discussion between us and he told me he was in awe how I had been to combat several times and all the stuff I had done. What I began to realize was that he had trained and prepared for years to be able to write a paper so long. I had not. What I had done was train in combat arms and medicine for years. Going to the field, shooting drills, shooting at targets that are silhouettes of humans, mass casualty drills, so on and so forth. I had prepared physically, mentally, and emotionally to perform the jobs at hand. Drop my buddy into that situation without my training and he would probably not fair well. In the opposite I can most assuredly tell you that even if that 50 pg paper was all that stood between me and my degree, I would walk the fukc away. I can't do it. School is where my anxiety sky rockets, and I mean in a seriously bad way. I'm not prepared for it. I am doing school, very slowly, playing a lot of catch up.
I cannot stress enough the importance in proper training/preparation for the job/mission/goal that one wishes to achieve.
"You do not rise to the occasion in combat, you sink to the level of your training. Do not expect the combat fairy to come bonk you with the combat wand and suddenly make you capable of doing things that you never rehearsed before. It will not happen." ~ Lt. Col. Dave Grossman
