The JO exodus: Senior officers don't understand that I joined to go to war

By yet another departing Marine
officer

Best Defense guest columnist

I have been following the Junior
Officer Exodus entries with great interest, because I, too, am a Marine
Corps company grade officer who will be leaving active duty this summer after
five years of active service. I share many of the frustrations of my fellow
lieutenants and captains, and even had a number of friends email me to ask if I
was the
Marine who wrote about being disappointed that the Marines are not the elite
force I was expecting. Apparently I have a history with
vitriolic rants. Though while my frustrations run deep, I am sure that I would
run into similar issues if I worked at the State Department, Goldman Sachs, or
GE.

Yet more than any of the frustrations
I have with my job, my senior officers, or what I perceive to be my future in
this organization, the single driving factor for me leaving active duty is that
I never wanted the military as a career. I joined the Marines a few years after
graduating from college. Throughout my undergraduate years, I kept pretending
that Iraq was a passing event that would be over shortly. I graduated from
college to take a corporate job, and after 18 months I couldn't shake the itch
that if my country was at war, I should be a part of it. I attended OCS, and
the rest is history.

I have thoroughly enjoyed my time in
the Marine Corps. I believe I had the best job a 24-to-29 year old can have. I joined
because I wanted to go to war and lead Marines in the pursuit of an enemy. Now
that we are in the full midst of the drawdown of forces in Afghanistan, there
is only a slim chance that I will deploy again. I got what I wanted from the
military (experience, adventure, the chance to shoot things, maturity,
discipline, leadership, new approaches to problem-solving), and the military
certainly got their money's worth out of me. It is simply time to move on to a
new phase of my life.

The problem I am facing now is that
most of my senior officers simply don't understand why I would ever want to
leave active duty. With few exceptions, all field grade officers joined the
military prior to 9/11. I am not questioning their motivation or patriotism,
but those of us who joined after 9/11 did so basically to go to war. I see many
older Marines (both officer and enlisted) enjoying the relatively low stress of
garrison military life. Fine, but that's not for me. In my late 20s, I am eager
to try other things (teaching, graduate school, business), and am willing to
take the risk that I will take a pay cut. The majors and lieutenant colonels
that I count as mentors have cautioned me against leaving a steady paycheck and
a possibility for a pension. I worry that this risk-averse nature it also
emblematic of the cover-your-ass trends in the military, but that is
an entirely separate discussion.

My caution to others in similar
positions is that you should be prepared to be looked at with suspicion and
disdain from senior officers as you prepare to leave active duty.