I'm just trying to think ahead. I have no doubts about Theo though, and that opens a door that I think should be open. We tend to think of vets as 'from here', and there are many more than just from CONUS. Oddly enough, US vets even include some from the Carribean Islands and Puerto Rico - I imagine not many people think of that but we recruit from many places.

 

Include American Samoa in that recruiting. We even have vets from the Philippines.

 

What if we get a 89 or 90-year old from Germany who's a veteran of the Wehrmacht? Do we let him in???

I mean, I don't want to see an FTZ vet from 'Grossdeutcschland' Panzergrenadier Division who fought on the Eastern Front getting into a fight with an Israeli commando......

 

Well, to me, the Vet Zone is dedicated to U.S. Vets. No matter their region of origin. Certainly, special consideration can be provided for Honorary inclusion on a one-on-one basis for those Vets of other nations. There really is no need to have this spin out of control and get the SCOTUS involved. Keep it simple and manageable.

I think it will be more than a week or two before we get so big for this to be an issue so, lets not make it one now.

 

It's more on the order of speculation than anything else right now.
In five or six years that I have been actively doing something like this here and on "elsewhere" it has been extremely rare to have a veteran from outside the USA ask about joining us - I think there may have been one or two on the old site. And that was a site that had been online for ages.

Granted we are more visible as we are set up now - the vet forum elsewhere only became active in the last year or so, before that it was only a thread in the general forum.

As far as Samoans - I think I have never seen anyone in a gym who looked as incredibly MASSIVE as a Samoan gent who had been at it for several years. Think "Sonny Schmidt" and you'll have some idea, the guy was solid as a rock...

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Sonny Schmidt passed on in 2004 in Melbourne Australia having won the Mr. Olympia several years before.
He was the first Polynesian to own the Mister Olympia title

The man looked like a walking volcano...

 

I guess I never really thought about this topic, and always assumed the "Vet Zone" was dedicated for use by U.S. Veterans.

 

I think that those from other nations services also think the same thing - and that is one of the main reasons I brought it up to kick some ideas around.

When I joined up the guy who talked me into attempting it told me that it was the largest fraternity and sorority that I could ever join - and he was right about that.

I have met soldiers and sailors from all over the world, Russia included, and in all of them I have seen that these are not the average individual from there - they have a far more rational perspective on everything, else they could not have passed the entrance exams.

It is a test of many things - irrational, ignorant, and/or uneducated people never even go to boot camp, unstable people don't survive it. What does that say about those who made a career of it?

There is an essential element of perseverence and self reliance that I think is a core element in those who make it through the weeding out process and I believe it is true no matter where we come from or for which nation we wore the uniform.

These are people well worth knowing!

~ it is a strange gate through which we have all passed...

This is not to say that I agree instantly with everyone I know who ever served. A man who turned out to be the best friend and roomate I ever had was an AD3 whom I threw across the livingroom of our apartment within the first week that I met the guy...

'Scheisse gescheite', stuff happens.

 

I knew a guy or two like that, Dutch. It's amazing how vehemently one can disagree with another, except when the work needs to be done. In the dormitory or anywhere off-base, I wouldn't turn my back on them. On the flightline, I trusted those same individuals with my life. Funny how that works, isn't it?

I agree about the foreign military personnel comment. For all our countries' differences, it's amazes me how similar service-members are, regardless of their country of origin.