Who Has Military Experience?

I know there are several people online who do have it, and have briefly emailed a few, so here's a question for the rest of us with military experience, how has your experience shaped the way you practice your arts?

When preparing for Bosnia, I gave great thought to close range self-defense being executed with "full battle rattle" (helmet, vest, suspenders, etc...). This is just one example of applying my skills in the environment I am in, not to mention the military mindset/philosophy of doing business and training.

Any other thoughts?

Bob

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From One Thing, Know Ten Thousand.

The one thing I noticed between guys with active service, SF, and non-military types is that the military guy teaches more practical techniques with little emphasis on "fighting" and more on "quick kills".

Hey Bob, thanks for serving.

I'm retired military and have had exposure to a number of sustems and yes, the military style is more direct and intent on taking care of business quickly.
I think a sourcebook for this type of simple, direct techniques anyone can learn (and especially those teaching the arts that want to provide a good basic self-defense type of stuff to beginners) is "Get Tough" the book written by the famous COL Fairbairn of WWII fame which he used as a text to train Britain's home-guard and commandos and used later to train our Rangers, FSSF and OSS types. It's "down and dirty" and gets to the matter quickly.
I've been doing the various MAs since 1968 and this text still gets down to essentials to me....especially for the beginner/novice who needs something up close,personal and simple in the street-fighting/defense regimen!
P.S. The modern Marine Corps "Hand to Gland" manual is a direct descendant of the American version of this book by the late COL Rex Applegate, books are available through Paladin Press if you're interested.
Enjoy your training.

Well I have prior Military and Police Experience. I would say that military training does tend to place one in a different mindset than ones civilian counterparts. I would agree that the focus is on dominating and destroying the opponent not only as quickly as possible but as BRUTALLY as possible.

The main difference I would say is in ones mindset. A military mind is geared towards winning and destroying the opponent. Once I left and reenetered the civilian sector I found my focus was more on controlling methods and ways to incapacatitate without causing serious bodily injury or death.

One other thing; In my unit it was kind of like being a kid in a candy store. We were basically trained to be dropped behind enemy lines and cause as much mayhem as possible. This left us with a lot of leeway and gave us a very unique perspective on how to utilize our skills. We did not have to worry so much about "consequences" so to speak.

Well thought I would throw some things out there since the question was asked. Of course now my mind is more on whats for dinner than who is attacking me [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img]

Peace,

Dave