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Originally Posted by StainlessSteelCynic
 Well as ex-Army Reserve I will say that I did not construe anything you said as patronising. And you're absolutely correct about the typical view various groups have towards a different group. For example, every trade/profession has it's own jargon and I would be just as lost trying to understand a conversation between brain surgeons as I would between plumbers.
Even within the military there are different groups that have their own lingo - I was recently reading a forum posting about the different branches of the USN having different slang terms for various things, so in my view, it's completely acceptable for a civilian to not know what a military person is going on about. |
So true, I spent about half my time in Armor, and finished up as EOD (with a little bouncing around in the middle). I still remember one of the early times I went to the field after leaving tanks. I was assigned to the .50 BMG as I was one of the few who had experience with it. The Engineers dug us fighting positions. There I was manning the MG when one of the guys comes around and asks if I am done with my range card, I asked him what a range card was. Blowing his mind, he wanted to know how I could make sergeant and not know what a range card was. I told him it was not something we used in tanks, when he explained what it was, I then told him that in all the armor units I had been is SOP was that each tank as a preassigned direction to cover, and we were not that worried about shooting the tank next to us with the MG, as we even had a command to do that.