@Murlaw...no offense meant. I think all services rib each other. Deep down everyone respects everyone else.
Me, I've got 20 years in. Grew up from a skinny, kick ass A1C, to a fat Fokker, man nurse Major (laughs). All teasing aside. I love all my military brethren.
At Landstuhl I had the opportunity to care for a hard core Marine. Started bleeding bad from a IED blast on the ward in Germany after getting evaced out from Fallujah II. Had my hand in the raw meat of his calf waiting for a surgeon to free up from the OR. Didn't complain one bit. I hit the call bell to have another nurse bring me some morphine for him. He didn't want it. I talked him into it. He needed it, but sure as hell wouldn't ask me for it. Surgeon came and stitched the bleeder, no numbing medicine. Wrapped him back up and he was good to go. Later that shift, he and a buddy were calling a squadmate's parents who didn't fare as well. Tears rolling down their faces telling mom and dad their son was the toughest SOB they knew, and was fighting for his life in the ICU. To me, that made him tougher than toughing out my hand in his leg.
In the OR I took care of an Army guy with 90% of his body burnt. I thought I'd seen everything. I hadn't. I had tears streaming down my face as I scrubbed his body with Betadyne to get him ready for his debridement. When we were done, he was wrapped in gauze head to toe, with only his breathing tube sticking out. I wrote him off as dead. Three years later, while sitting in Staff College, I see in USA Today online that he just died. He fought a near 0% survival rate for three years and succumbed to a lung infection stateside. Had to excuse myself from class. I wrote him off. Talk about guilt. He died a hero in at least one person's heart.
I had the privilege of working the operating room on the USNS Comfort after the Haiti earthquake while waiting for our hospital tentage and gear to show up. Those Navy guys rocked and rolled in their ORs 24-7 for weeks with little rest trying to piece back together some portion of the shattered lives of the earthquake victims. Amazing. But just to show you the teasing goes all ways, after sleeping on the ground in Haiti on a tarp with mosquito net over me for 10 days, dirty as dirt and a meal for God knows how many insects, when I got aboard ship, the ops officer of the OR tells me, "You've got to have on the wrong uniform, I've never seen an Air Force person so dirty. Get your ASCII below decks and get a shower." "Aye-aye. GLADLY," I said.
And let's not forget those SEAL heroes that just avenged the deaths of those who perished on 9/11. Those guys should never have to buy another beer in their entire lives, provided they are ever authorized to say they were there.
I joke and kid about interservice rivalries, but please don't believe for a minute I have any kind of disrespect for any service member. Believe me when I tell you I've had the honor and privilege of taking care of and working with the most incredible people in the world in all services.
I'm sorry you felt my comments as somehow a slight to your father's heroics. They were never intended to belittle him, or anyone else in uniform for that matter.
...signing off from my comfortable Air Force billeting in an undisclosed location in SW Asia.
