(11-10-2014, 11:44 AM)Animayhem Wrote: Regardless of ones feelings about war all Veterans world wide of all countries deserve respect.
Well...except for the ones serving North Korea, maybe. Screw those guys. :P
The Russians are cool, though. I served with the Air Force for four years, and while I was stationed at Malmstrom Air Force Base (which, at the time, was a joint air refuelling and Minuteman III launch facility), I got to meet some of the Russian brass after Bill Clinton and Boris Yeltsin signed another nuclear disarmament treaty and both Russia and the USA sent officers over to supervise and make sure that the other team was upholding their end of the bargain by decommissioning X number of nukes. Being a peon in MetNav Maintenance, I didn't get any advance notice that the Russians were coming, so I, a puny little Senior Airman, was just standing in the weather ops station, waiting for the ATC tower to give me permission to walk out onto the flightline and tinker with some of our weather equipment, when suddenly the door to the flightline flew open and in marched a mob of
our generals and colonels escorting a mob of
their generals and colonels. I don't think I ever backed up against a wall and snapped a perfect salute so fast in my entire life.
And my little brother served with the Marine Corps. At one point, he was a Marine Security Guard, and he got picked to guard the new American embassy in Vladivostok, Russia (the first American embassy on Russian soil, mind you). So there were American Marines keeping watch inside the embassy grounds, and there were Russian soldiers keeping watch outside the gate. And sometimes the two would mess with each other, like the one night when my brother and two of his buddies got a little red laser pointer, went up to the embassy's roof and shined that little red dot right into the Russian guard shack. That shack just
exploded with Russians diving out of the shack and taking cover from the "sniper" before finding out that the Americans were just having a laugh at their expense. To their credit, my dumb brother didn't get shot over that. Usually it was just the Marines tossing pennies onto the guard shack's roof and hiding when the Russians came out to see what the noise was, though.
Being a Russian soldier guarding the perimeter of an American embassy must suck. Anyway, we've come a long way since the Cold War, haven't we? :)
Also, Gene Simmons deserves godhood and I thank you for this thread. :D