It’s all good. No stress. I’m happy to leave it…
I DM’d 
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DM’d ya Neddy.
Sent the same message to LS, hopefully he got it.
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I was in the army for 6 years. Obviously I chose to join. I wasn’t infantry I was in the REME (Royal electrical mechanical engineers) and was a electronics technician.
When you go through basic training you can DOAR which is basically writing a letter stating you want to leave training. This is probably only the chance you get to leave with relative ease. You write your letter you go and see the boss etc and explains you can carry on if you want or if you are serious about leaving training then you can. People did it when I went through some people had done it before and this was their 2nd go and being in the army.
When you go onto phase 2 training which is your trade or technical training. For me this was key skills, maths, science, electronics, fault finding etc. It’s a lot harder to leave during phase 2. There was only 2 people who left when I went through. One was someone in their early 30s so he used the line of being older having more life experience to make his decision to leave, bear in mind most of us were 18,19 early 20s or similar.
Then once you’re out in the field army or posted to your first unit you have to complete 4 years service. To leave at the end of your 4th year you have to give your notice at the end of your 3rd year. You apply for early termination and then have several interviews with various higher ranks and eventually the colonel. Just things like are you sure you want to do this, what are you going to do when you leave, do you have a plan, where are you going to leave etc. After all of that it gets approved and then you have a year til you leave. When I did mine and spoke to the colonel he said its actually very hard to kick someone out of the army. Quickest way is usually a failed drugs test. They are done at random usually.
I’ve fired rifles etc, it isn’t all its cracked up to be. When it’s drilled into you from day one week one that you never keep your rifle more then an arms length away from you the idea of handling and carrying one isn’t such a big deal. Things like call of duty etc have probably glamourised weapons and black ops type things, it isn’t like that in reality.
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Lies, firing off tracer bullets on an anti-tank machine gun feels dope as fuck! Yeeeeha! Haha.
*edit: Obviously when there is no enemy to fire back at you mind.
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I’m quite fascinated by this now because it seems nuts that this is happening today.
Does Switzerland have a ‘proper’ army then?
What happens if you’re Swiss but leave the country. Do you have to come back home?
More importantly in a country with what looks like unlimited rural space, why did they put a firing range here?!
A good friend was in the Ukraine making a doc for a channel - gonna keep it vague because I don’t know what he was allowed to say or not, to me - and it was based on volunteers coming forward. It’s all COD fans who think it is just like a video game.
But apparently, none of them want to be ‘frontline’. And then they shit themselves when they are told that really, there only is the frontline and thats where they are heading.
Daft sods.
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Yeh tracer firing and then bouncing off does look cool. I just meant like handling a rifle or just shooting off rounds isn’t like the movies firing from the hip at close range.
I last posting was HCR and they used CVRT. Small recce tank 3 man crew, driver commander and gunner. They were a armed with a 30mm cannon and 7.62mm gpmg. We would have to support their gun camps and gunnery training. There would usually be a mechanic, armourer and a tech for any faults whilst they were firing on the range.
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Each year we would have to do a weapon handling test practicing loading unloading, making a weapon safe what to do when you get a stoppage. Then you’d have to do that for each different weapon system. And things like not pointing a weapon at anyone even jokingly are drilled into you, not putting your muzzle in the dirt and stuff. There was things like each year we had to go through the rules of armed conflict. There was rules of engagement, it isn’t just firing off rounds because someone looked dodgy.
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I think these guys were carrying boxes, frontline. No weapons.
It seemed to be that they wanted the guns. But only from the safety of being miles away from anything vaguely frontline.
but I am telling a story which was told to me for which I didn’t pay a ton of attention to…but you get the gist.
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I can only talk about my experiences. I never came under direct enemy fire or anything like that. There is lots of training that goes on so most of it becomes second nature. That doesn’t mean accidents don’t happen because they do. Closet I got was when I was in a check point and I was there to fix a piece of equipment and while I was getting my scoff one night someone threw a grenade over the wall. No one got hit the search dog got hit with some shrapnel and got air lifted back to Bastion.
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Yes and no.
We do have tanks, F18s and professional military officers and all that shit but I’m not sure any of it would make any kind of difference if we ever went to war (which is never going to happen anyway). It’s all a big, big waste of money if you ask me but like most countries we have a faire amount of right-wingers who think that any Muslim can bomb their house at any time (Switzerland never engaged in imperialism or any kind of colonialism which makes stuff like this even less likely to happen, unlike France, Belgium or the UK for example).
Not sure how those things work these days.
My girlfriend’s uncles both left when they were in their twenties as they wanted to have nothing to do with military service. Back then )we’re talking about the 70s here, not that long after WW2) you couldn’t come back for 20 years or you’d have to go to prison, so they both stayed in Quebec where they settled for good. They basically said FUCK YOU to the army and went overseas and lived the American dream. They’re kind of heroes to me.
Funnily enough, a relative from Quebec is visiting and flying here as I’m typing this.
Unlimited rural space? You have definitely never been here. Go to the Scottish Highlands, you’ll find proper, raw land there. You’ll feel like you are nowhere, in the best way possible. We have nice scenery here but the country is pretty small and densely populated. You’re never really far from a fucking bunker from WW2 (remember we share borders with France, Italy and Germany) or something made in disgusting concrete here unless you go really really high in the mountains (and even there there’s too many electric pylons and fucking ski lifts everywhere to my taste).
Spill the beans @nedertron 
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Not in here moite haha.
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I jest!
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As that guy in the doc Les posted mentioned, a lot of people keep their firearm at home after military service here, and, to my taste, far too many of them use them to kill their wife’s lover.
Fuck weapons.
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the Swiss Sex Pistols?!
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Today my insta is randomly full of suggested posts from random skaters in St Neots. No idea why.
There must be something in the water there cos they all have the absolute worst taste in tricks and fits.
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Instagram is getting confused with your proximity to both Guildford and Liverpool and it’s fucking up the algo. Well done.
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