The thing about joining the military is the waiting… remember that queue you joined to sign up to the FEF and ‘see the world’? Well that’s the shortest wait you’ll have in military life. Wait for your go order, wait for your dinner, wait for your clearance to fire, and so on and so on.
If you can wait around, in any weather (yeah… ask the guys on Op4 on the weather) then you can be a soldier.
If you can keep your head while everyone around you suddenly gets in a mad fucking rush to storm up a hill after 1 minute despite asking you to carefully radio back the details of what they’re about to storm into, thus giving away your position and getting you shredded by rad-brambles as you execute an emergency relocation under fire, if you can coolly get on with the job with that level of fucktardery going on in the background…. Then, my friend, you can be recon.
On the flipside as well, if you can keep it together when you’re staring down your scopes at a Fortitude security post, 6 fighters with DMRs and one of those Power Armour types, then realise that your back up team has found a downed aircraft full of engineering salvage and isn’t coming your way before tomorrow…. Then, my friend, you can be recon.
That’s the thing with recon…. It’s you! Sure you’re part of a team, we all are… but you’ll be a far flung part of that team that many members of it won’t recognise. You’ll be the important voice at the end of the radio… the watcher beyond the horizon. It can be a lonely life. Hell we don’t even get the rack time in the bunker, or the outpost. We’re mostly living outside.
But that’s the joy…. You’re that far away from things that you have your own world. It’s your move, your decisions, where to go? Observe, communicate, move on… be a ghost. You’re so far away from the group that commanders couldn’t even find you with a drone scan, there’s no officer type breathing down your neck.
Sounds idyllic doesn’t it? Until you’re tagged 4 miles outside the recognised theatre of ops, and you’ve done your job so well that the neither the medics nor the long range scanners can find you. You’re going to need to be self-sufficient. Nobody is coming behind you with spare ammo, dry bedding, MED patches or coffee. You learn to stitch your wounds, tolerate the stomach convulsions from irradiated areas, know what to eat and what to burn. Some of those flowers and mushrooms will fuck you up… ask Lexi… she knows that stuff.
But watching the sunrise through the Lower Pennine fallout cloud, and getting back to those sweet sweet decontamination showers… man that’s a lifestyle.
Considering a career in Recon? Ask away…. I’m heading out to recon the Facility soon, if you’re coming, let Maverick know.