Some questions from an old 15th MEU

[James Royle]

Hi,

I used to be a member of the 15th MEU, joined up maybe a month or two before the Major (think that was his rank at the time) left and founded the 506th. Was there for a few more months, but life started getting busy, and the fact that I was getting promoted a bit too fast for my comfort really didn't help since a lot of people were moving over. Ended up being a Lance Corporal really fast leading a fire team, and I didn't even feel qualified. I ended up processing out.

Just wanted to ask some questions:

1. How fast is the promotion environment here, and is it mandatory? i.e. If I join, how fast should I expect to be moving up? I never felt like a good leader.
2. I see that you have operations on Saturdays and Sundays. That's great, that works for me, but one of my biggest issues was rounding up the fireteam for the required training exercises. We never could agree on a time. It'd be especially bad right now for me during the week, so are those required here?
3. Another big issue we had is the missions generally took a while to actually do anything. Some missions our team would go most if not all the mission without ever engaging.

Still debating if I want to join up, but it's good to see that the group seems to be doing well.

[1st Lt (Ret) Hardman]

Mr Royle,

I'll answer these questions as broadly as I can, as some of it will depend on your final billet and MOS within the unit. For more specific guidance, I'd recommend reaching out to myself or one of our Recruiters via PM and/or Teamspeak to discuss in more detail. Much of what I say below will be directed exclusively at an 11B MOS as it makes up the bulk of our membership.

1. Promotions up to non-leadership rank cap will happen within your first ~3-4 months of being a full, active, member of the unit. Personnel in reserves don't promote automatically so if you are unable to take an active billet, you will (generally speaking) not promote past PV2 until you become active. That being said, leadership is never forced upon anyone. If you don't feel like taking a leadership position - don't. Easy as that.

2. Active duty infantry members of the unit are required to attend "most" of 4x Squad Trainings & 1x Platoon Training per month, in addition to their required Ops. If you are unable to make this work, then active reserves is the place for you. In reserves, you can simply attend at any time that suits you, so long as a spot is available. That being said, all our training times are fixed in the schedule, and you'll be assigned to a squad whose times you can make.

3. In the 506th we keep a pretty keen focus on the fact that we are here for enjoyment and that, for most people, enjoyment means shooting bad guys. It will be pretty rare for you, in an 11B MOS, to come home with more than half your ammo left.

Again it's hard to be too specific without knowing more about what you want to do here. But so far it sounds like we could make this work. Reach out to me or one of my recuiters and we'll get you squared away with the rest.

Regards,

SSG Hardman
S-1 Chief | S-3 Recruit Training Instructor

[James Royle]

Rifleman sounds pretty good to me. As fun as helicopters and planes are, I've always liked milsim as a standard infantry.

Hmm. I'll have to check out the schedule, but I might be able to do all that, especially considering the unit time is actually EST. I'll check things out. Thank you!