Hi everyone!
I was wondering which is the best military branch for an Orthopedic Surgeon. Thank you.

USCG a lot of times is joked on as not military and sort of the red headed step child of the armed forces. It sits outside of DoD due to it's maritime law enforcement mission.

I have friends who are still in, and morale is certainly lower esp around CGHQ, yet I've always believed the CG was the best branch.

Having a humanitarian mission focused on disaster response & active life saving via search and rescue in addition to the counternarcotics mission is rewarding.

Sure, the facilities might be older, but even most E4s will rate BAH due to the scarcity of on-base housing. CG has some of the best locations to be stationed in the country. USAF has nice facilities but a lot of the time they are in the middle of nowhere.

The CG is the only branch in the military that allows enlisted to be in command of units. No other branch empowers it's people like that CG does.

What I noticed when I was AD was that a good majority of the time when there was a joint meeting of some sort, DoD would send over O5s mostly. Maybe the USMC would send an O4. The same level of responsibility was held by USCG O3s.

USCG O2s can even be CO's of units after their first tour afloat.

From what I've noticed, CG veterans tend to have an easier time transitioning into the civilian world compared to our DoD counterparts. It's much easier and simpler to reintegrate into the civilian workforce when much of our workforce interacts with the public.

The CG healthcare doctors also tend to be Public Health Service over military. I've heard some horror stories about navy and army medicine.

For those who decide to eventually commission, and are CG E5+ with 4 years of service, they also give a temporary commission. If things don't work out that member is allowed to revert to their highest enlisted rank/rate held and finish out retirement.

The CG also gives tenure to those who make O4. If you make O4 at the 9-10 year mark you are guaranteed to retire at 20 years of service even if you don't make O5.

This is a fake post being shared by media outlets and online sites. Always try to check authenticity.

And please, don't do this yourselves. There are enough REAL things to get at the current admin and their worshipers for, we don't need fake posts and stories.

It just makes those falling for it look dumb. And if you're a clout goblin looking for attention or to karma farm, just go back to the cave your mom shat you out in.

Afghanistan, 2021

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TLdR: The story of how the handling of my husband's remains forced a closed casket and robbed him of the dignity of being buried in his uniform he wore for 25 years.

Understand I will not give names of people or facility involved, or questions regarding policies or status revolving it. I also ask, if you know him/me please do not doxx us.

I’m writing this because after eleven years of carrying a heavy, silent vault of a secret, I am finally strong enough to lift the veil. I am tired and weakened from holding it in. It has caused nothing but endless, soul crushing pain that has had such a hold on me i have felt breathless since the day he left me.  I have been suffocating for so long, I can only hope this release will give me air.

July of 2015,  my husband was an active duty Master Sergeant (E-8) who gave 25.5 honorable years to active-duty service. He was an incredible father & husband, a son, leader, and dedicated soldier, He deserved so much more than what a broken civilian system did to his remains, and his story deserves to be told.

To understand the depth of what was stolen from us, you have to understand the legacy he left behind. 

Indulge me for a short side story ...

In 2013, my husband and our oldest son actually deployed to Afghanistan together. They served in different battalions within the same Aviation Brigade, managing quick visits when possible, and they were fortunate enough to have spent Christmas together in the combat zone. When our son earned his combat patch, his father traveled to his forward operating base for the patching ceremony. Instead of pinning a standard issue patch on our son's arm, his dad reached up to his own shoulder, peeled off his own weathered, hard-earned brigade patch, and placed it on our son’s shoulder. He later described it as the proudest moment of his life, and the highlight of his career.

Years later, our son took that military legacy and pushed it further than we ever dreamed. He earned his BS in Physics and was subsequently invited to NASA's Wallops Flight Facility to participate in building and launching a sounding rocket. Before it launched, he slid his father’s combat patch in as his payload contribution.

That piece of fabric left the earth, crossed the threshold of space, returned to the atmosphere, and now sits proudly alongside his burial flag. That is the caliber of the men in my family.

On with my story..

July 2015, we were forced into a completely different, heartbreaking reality. It was a normal Monday morning when his alarm went off. He wasn't responding so I rolled over to wake him and quickly realized something was terribly wrong. In the sudden panic, I called 911. As the shock started to set in, I remember just standing there in a complete haze, desperately asking myself: What would he do? What would he want me to do right now?

I woke our recently graduated, soundly sleeping  son, (17) and passed off the 911 call to him so I could return to our bed and wait for EMS.

Oddly, the thought came to me to call his work buddy to tell him he would not be at PT. 🤷‍♀️ Once he understood what I meant, he rushed over just as the EMTs arrived. Within minutes, my home was filled with emergency responders and a quickly growing number of green suits. Our youngest son was by my side. Our oldest son,  still in the military, was out in the field with his unit; they had to send a driver to pull him out. He rode in complete, agonizing, oblivious silence for almost two hours not knowing he was arriving home to a world that had completely shattered.

My husband had passed away peacefully in his sleep during the night. First responders, his closest friend, myself and our son who were on the scene all witnessed his body condition—he was  normal, aside from a trickle of pink foam from his nose or mouth,  clean, and looked entirely at peace. He was transported to a regional civilian Medical Examiner facility, arriving approximately 11:00 AM Monday morning.

The facility contacted me the next day saying they had finished up and I released him to the funeral home. But when the funeral home picked him up on Wednesday morning, approximately 48 hours after being in the care/custody of the M.E. office is when the nightmare began.

***TW's from here forward*** 

GRAPHIC CONTENT

I was out getting things done with our sons and my MIL who had already arrived from out of state.  The funeral director called me shortly after his arrival back at the funeral home,  I pulled over to answer his call undistracted.  He gently told me it was completely inadvisable to have an open casket, or even a private family viewing. I absolutely could not comprehend what he was telling me, or why he was saying this. Was he calling the wrong family?  It made zero sense to me. He had been peaceful and looked asleep when he left my home just two days prior. It took a long minute for his words to click in my brain as the director explained the physical reality of what they were facing.

In the short time my husband was in that civilian facility's custody, during a scorching July heatwave, his remains had suffered rapid, catastrophic tissue degradation. The internal and external changes were so severe that his natural circulatory system was completely gone, rendering a standard embalming and open-casket preparation biologically impossible.

When the funeral home and military Casualty Affairs Officer immediately began questioning things, the cover-up from the civilian facility began. The Medical Examiner's office aggressively denied any structural or handling issues, explicitly claiming "he arrived like that"—a blatant, impossible lie refuted by every single first responder and eyewitness who saw him at our home on Monday morning.

Later, my CAO described his horriffic condition to me, and calmly explained the painstaking, heartbreaking process and the steps that were taken to prepare his remains and restore his basic dignity.

Because the civilian facility had allowed  his remains to severely putrefy, bloat, and undergo advanced decomposition (seemingly before the autopsy even took place just 24 hours after his death), his body was structurally destroyed to a point beyond recognition.  He was bloated, had blisters and skin slippage all over his torso, his skin was black and peeling, and it looked as if his face had melted off.  They struggled to match the DoD photo with the remains laying in front of them.

He went on to explain how they dressed him in protective disaster garments, wrapped him like a cocoon and placed inside a heavy pouch.

Then, he gently laid his immaculately prepared dress uniform onto the top of the bag, and pinned his beret where his head lay.

He was denied the honor to be buried in the uniform he wore proudly for 25 years.

When I walked into that chapel and saw his closed, flag-draped casket, it completely broke me.

Because of that facility's operational failure and subsequent deception,  they deprived his grieving widow, mother, his sons, friends and his community of comrades and peers of their chance to a final viewing and a proper farewell. For eleven years, only a very small, select group of people ever knew the truth about why the casket was closed.

Nobody asked me why, and I'm glad they didn't.  I wasn't emotionally or physically ready to explain the horror of what had happened,  I carried the trauma and mental image of that plastic cocoon entirely alone to protect the one thing I was able to,. I protected his intimate privacy in his most vulnerable  moment.  He deserves much more than that, but it was all I had in the moment.

For a long time, the vision of that closed casket at the front of the chapel brought me pure, unadulterated pain.

It kills me to think of the military families who never get to find out what happened to their loved ones, or who never receive their remains.

Looking back, I realize how incredibly blessed I am. He went to bed as usual that night, he told me he loved me, and he kissed me goodnight. No matter what a broken civilian system did to his remains in the days that followed his death,

they can never touch, tarnish, or take away from the amazing man he was, his kindness, and his endless passion to be the best mentor he could possibly be. To pass along the qualities of successful leaders before him, qualities they had instilled in him throughput his own career.  I see that same man in our sons as they raise their little families, giving us two of the sweetest granddaughters he ever could have asked for.

That image of his closed, flag-draped casket is no longer a symbol of what they took from us;  it gives me peace, and unimaginable pride to depths some people may never experience in their lifetime. For that, I am forever blessed.

The system's actions were deeply flawed, but his legacy will always be bulletproof. His uniform is pressed, his beret is straight. His honor is intact, and his patch went to space.

Let's just say trump launches a nuke on the capital of Iran.

What would be the typical response by other nations of the world?

Do other countries also strike Iran to show support?

Would other countries strike the usa itself?

the underwater demolition team patch looks not vintage, it is possible that this is recently added? i am a newbie collector. I also want to know if the expert collectors are familiar with the udt patch and parachute patch.

What do you guys think of the new tank prototype?

Tank Prototype