Hi. I would very much appreciate all responses from this thread as I have been racking my brain for some time now. I have been considering whether or not I should join the army after school. I am a bit of an idealist and wish to help people. Please do not take this the wrong way as I do believe that the military helps a great deal of people. This is what confuses me. I have heard multiple military personnel online state that you should not join if what largely motivates you is the helping of others (although there are other reasons). Why do people say this and is this completely or only partly true? Thanks very much!
Idealist Joining Military?
- Thread starter John1999
- Start date
buffy9
Well-Known Member
Your likely to end up helping a lot of people if you end up in the Australian army. We do a lot of humanitarian aid, peacekeeping and disaster relief operations throughout the region (e.g. Operation Fiji Assist or RAMSI) and will continue to do so for some time. The real question is how much do you want to help people, in what kind of way and whether you are willing to take on some of the darker realities of being a soldier.
While a lot of the work we do is aid/relief based, we are trained first and foremost to be soldiers. We train to and do fight wars, period. Additionally your less likely to end up helping people if you go for a job like infantry or armour. If you truly want to help people out then going into a medical or engineering role is your best bet as it is likely you will end up doing health or relief tasks more often. People probably say joining the military to simply help others is a bad idea because it is not our core responsibility as soldiers with work such as counter-insurgency or conventional war fighting generally being our bread and butter. That being said, history seems to show that we conduct peacekeeping and relief operations more frequently than major war fighting. It's only natural considering the amount of cyclones, flooding, earthquakes and other disasters we get.
My advise, join a support position or trade if you want to help people. You may still be called into war if it ever occurs, though your more likely to be deployed to aid or relief operations and will still be helping people in war in such a career path. Just be prepared to pick up a rifle at the end of the day. Hope I could help.
Todjaeger
Potstirrer
If you seek to help people, how do you seek to help them, and/or where do your talents seem to lie? Not being in Australia, I am uncertain exactly what avenues there are to 'help' people, but I would imagine that they are broadly similar across most of the globe.
From my own experience in the US with HADR operations there are numerous types of opportunities.
- emergency first aide/medical services
- search & rescue
- fire service/support
- canine search/handling
- disaster animal response
- emergency communications
- emergency sheltering/mass care
- emergency food service/mass care
In many cases, the above list has both civilian and military counterparts that cover the same type of role. If you are thinking of joining up, consider what you like to do and depending on how long it will be before you join up, see if there are local civilian or volunteer agencies that cover some of the functions you think you might like doing.
- Thread Starter Thread Starter
- #4
Thanks guys. I will definitely consider support roles and am particularly interested in emergency first aid or something like that. However, I was thinking about being an officer (if I get in) and possibly joining a more combat orientated branch. Just a follow up question if that's not too pushy. Is the military a good place to gain security training and credentials? Thanks very much again.
