Was it worth it?

Yesterday, December 23, 2016 was Brandon's last day as an Active Duty Soldier.  He is officially out of the Army now.  Let's take a look back at why he joined the Army, some of the things that happened, and whether or not it was worth it.

Five years ago neither Brandon nor I had any plans for joining the military.  Though looking back I can certainly see that we were heading there.  Its like our Heavenly Father was shutting every door so that we'd eventually find the joining the Army was what we HAD to do.

Back in December of 2011 we were living in Bountiful, Utah.  The twins were just barely 1 year old.  I was in my second trimester with Derrick.  Brandon was unemployed because he quit his ramp agent job with Frontier Airlines in September when everything about that job went from mediocre to Hell. He was applying for jobs with the FAA and we were hopeful we'd hear something after the new year.  In the meantime we were paying our bills with our savings and getting out food from the LDS church's Bishops Store house. Brandon was also earning money by doing odd jobs. The only way we were able to afford to have a Christmas was when our friends hired Brandon to help re-shingle their house after a freak wind storm.  In short, it was a stressful time.

2012 did bring us news about the FAA job, but it was not news we wanted.  Brandon was told that he did not meet all the requirements for the job.  This was terrible news since that was Brandon's best career prospect. I turned to social media to vent my feelings, and received a message from my friend Nicky.  Here's some of  what she said:

Hey Val, I almost wasn't going to send you this because I don't know much about your circumstances or if it would even be right for you guys. But it sounded like it might be a good option, so I thought I should tell you anyway.

I was doing laundry tonight at my dad's place and mentioned your situation. He said that you guys might want to look into Brandon joining the Navy or Air Force with the objective of flying transports. . . . Flying transports is a land based job, so he wouldn't be gone for months at a time on an aircraft carrier. It sounds a bit more like the situation of an airline pilot. There are also submarine tracking flights with the Navy, which is supposed to be land based as well. Many, many, many airline pilots have gotten their start flying transports and it looks great on a resume. The Navy and Air Force require anyone wanting to be a pilot to have a bachelor degree before they begin training. I think you mentioned in your blog post that Brandon graduated from USU, so he'd be in a good position to start training as a pilot.

. . .

I have no idea if any of this will be useful to you guys. There are a lot of horror stories about recruiters out there, but my brother had good experiences with the ones he encountered. . . .

I almost wrote back and told her that we weren't interested in the military.  But something told me that this might be something worth looking into.  So I told her I'd talk to Brandon about it.  To my surprise he'd been considering the same thing.  

So that started the month where we talked and thought about nothing else. Brandon met with a recruiter who let him know that he was too old for the Air Force and had too many dependents for the Navy.  That left the Army as an option and Brandon started looking at that.

We also started talking to the few people we knew with military experience.  My best friend Ashley was probably the best source of information for me.  Her husband had joined the Army about 2 years earlier.  While it hadn't been easy for them she said that it was a good decision.  Brandon talked to one of his professors who had served in the Air Force.  When he asked him if it would be hard on the family the professor answered with, "There are a lot of jobs that are harder on a family than the military is."

It seemed like the military was ALL we talked about. Should he join, where would I live during basic training, how would we tell our families, etc. To distract myself from everything I started reading Work and the Glory Volume 9. Some distraction it turned out to be. A major plot point in the book revolves around the LDS Saints call to join the Mormon Battalion. EVERYBODY in the book was trying to decide whether or not to join the Army. I felt like the following quotes from Brigham Young were speaking directly to me.

"I know what many of you are thinking. You are concerned about your circumstances. Well, I am as well acquainted with the situation of every man in camp as they are themselves. But now the surrounding circumstances must recede from our minds. Let go of them. We may as well consider ourselves in good circumstances as in bad ones.

"But says one, 'I will go if my family can be made comfortable.' I told my brethren not to mention families today. I am aware it is desirable, were it our privilege, to have every man's presence in the camp to take care of his family and team and go along to the West. There are no more men here than what are badly needed. But these feelings must be dispensed with. We have to learn to control our feelings and act according to our best judgement.

"My experience has taught me that it is best to do the things that are necessary. I have learned to do the necessary thing independent of my feelings and at the expense of everything near and dear to me. May of us have been called upon to forsake the society of friends, wives and children, and you will all be brought into a situation to learn the same lesson.

"The blessings we are looking forward to receive will only be attained through sacrifice . . . If we want the privilege of going where we can worship God according to our consciences, we must raise the battalion. I say that it is right. Who cares for sacrificing our comfort for a few years?"
After probably more prayer and fasting than we'd EVER done Brandon and I decided that he should join the Army. Oddly enough flight school with the army wasn't part of the plan.  His recruiter mentioned that there were helicopter pilots in the Army, but wasn't really helpful at telling us anything about them.  (Knowing what we know now we realize that she could have helped Brandon apply for Flight School before he even signed up.  He could have been what's called a "street to seat candidate." But I'm glad we didn't do that because it would have been awful to be thrown into Army life and flight school at the same time.) Brandon was told that he'd be sworn in and go to Basic Training in September.  Thankfully at the end of January his cousin helped him get a job where he could work until September.

I'm not going to take the time to detail the twists and turns from the ensuing four years of Army life.  But I'll give you brief run down.  (And I'll link to a few old posts to make things easy for you to get more details.)

Brandon did enlist in the Army in September of 2012.  He did four months of Basic Training at Fort Benning Georgia.  I stayed in Bountiful with our three kids under the age of 2.  I had help from a small army of family, friends, and neighbors.  I was able to fly to Georgia in December for Brandon's graduation.

Brandon was assigned to Fort Hood so after Christmas we moved to Texas. The move was kind of awful, but by the time it was over we were settled in a four bedroom house on post.  Considering that we'd been living in a two bedroom apartment we were feeling pretty good about the decision to join the Army.

Things were better, but they weren't easier.  Brandon had to go away for another month of training, I found out I was pregnant AGAIN, and Brandon was told that he's be going to Korea. But we also started looking into what exactly it would take for Brandon to become a helicopter pilot in the Army.
He started the long process of putting together a packet (application) to become a Warrant Officer and go to flight school.  He worked on this for months.

Veronica was born in September of 2013 and Brandon went to Korea in January of 2014.  I stayed in our house in Fort Hood with our four children under the age of four.  Somehow this wasn't as crazy as it sounds.

Brandon finished his packet while he was in Korea.  And in July we got the wonderful news that he was accepted into Flight School and would go to Warrant Officer training the next March.  He came home from Korea in October, and we enjoyed some family time while getting ready for him to leave again.

In March of 2015 Brandon moved to Fort Rucker, Alabama and started Warrant Officer Candidate School.  The kids and I followed in May and were moved into the house right in time for his Graduation.  Brandon worked on some preliminary training during the summer and then officially started Flight School in September.  He finished primary flight training in April of 2016.

We knew flight school would be rigorous, but nothing prepared us for how difficult it really was.  Add in Brandon's sleeping problem and eventually it became apparent that he wasn't suited for being a military pilot.  And if he couldn't fly he didn't want to stay in the Army.

And suddenly we were facing the end of this crazy Army life adventure.  I'd been expected at least another 6 years so it was odd to have only a few months left.  Ironically I was more worried about getting out of the Army than I had about getting into it in the first place.  But I figured that joining the Army had seemed pretty crazy once upon a time, but it had worked out okay so getting out of the Army should work out too.

I still don't know what the next phase of our life will be like.  Things are very much in the air right now.  In some ways we are back where we were 5 years ago.  Brandon has even applied for that same position with the FAA and we are hoping to hear back in a few weeks.

But in other ways we are much better off.  I want to talk about those things.

We joined the Army mostly for financial reasons.  We aren't wealthy by any means, but we are a lot better off financially.  We have paid off quite a bit of debt, bought a second car, and have more in savings than ever before.

Career wise we are in a much better place. Brandon is considered a veteran and now has "Veterans Preference" when he applies for jobs.

Even though Brandon didn't finish flight school he did still get a lot of helicopter flight hours. Getting a commercial helicopters licence is within his reach if he decides to do a little bit more flight training.  (If we are crazy enough to do flight school for a THIRD time we are going to use veterans benefits to pay for it.)  

We've both grown a lot from the last few years.  Both of us have done things that we never thought we could do.  I like to joke that the Army has turned me into a spontaneous person.

Do you want to know what is the best thing we gained in the past 5 years?  It's been the relationships with people we've come in contact with.  We have met so many AMAZING people by being in the Army.  People that I never would have met otherwise. I'm so thankful that I was able to live and associate with such wonderful people in Texas and Alabama.  And Brandon also made some great friends in Korea.

I like to say that joining the Army was "The sacrifice that keeps on giving."  Sure we had to give up a few comforts and do hard things, but the benefits far outweighed the things we gave up.

So was it worth it?

Yes.and I would do it again.