• Be sure you understand the contract! Find someone to explain it to you if you do not. This contract lists ALL of your rights and obligations, and you want to make sure you understand it.
  
  
• Know that all branches of the military, except the Marine Corps and the Coast Guard, offer a college loan repayment program in their enlistment contracts. Be sure to find out whether this program applies to your particular college loan, because it does not apply to all of them. Understand the differences between the Montgomery GI Bill and the Post-9/11 GI Bill (which fully kicks in after August, '09).
  
  
• If you accept the College Fund bonus, under the "old" Montgomery GI Bill, it will reduce your enlistment bonus. Most of the College Fund money you get through enlistment is available to you anyway through the "new" G.I. Bill. You do not need to apply for the College Fund in order to be eligible for this money. The contract makes no mention of this fact.
  
  
• Because of Section 8.c. and 9.b., be sure to get a full Annex to Section 8, not just 8.a. or 8.b.

Modern Combat Training conditions soldiers to act reflexively to stimuli and this maximizes soldiers’ lethality, but it does so by bypassing their moral autonomy. Soldiers are conditioned to act without considering the moral repercussions of their actions; they are enabled to kill without making the conscious decision to do so. If they are unable to justify to themselves the fact that they killed another human being, they will likely — and understandably — suffer enormous guilt. This guilt manifests itself as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and it has damaged the lives of thousands of men who performed their duty in combat.” — Lt. Colonel Peter Kilner, Professor of Philosophy and Ethics, West Point Military Academy
Note: This "modern combat training" methodology came about when studies showed that only about 10% to 25% of WWII combat personnel actually fired at the "enemy." The new approach, which showed up with higher kill rates in Vietnam, is to train to fire much faster, which has "improved" the rate of firing has increased to about 95%. BUT the end result can be lethal for civilians and the soldier that does the firing can be traumatized for life, because "In the wars of the 1990s, civilian deaths constituted between 75% and 90% of all war deaths" (quote from "What Every Person Should Know About War" by Chris Hedges).

"The desire to hurt someone or something comes from a kind of alienation from self and from nature."
~ Malidoma Some

Also understand that physical disability as a result of combat is only the "tip of the iceburg." Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), known as "shell shock" in past wars and resulting in terrific trauma to the individual and his/her immediate family, is slowly becoming more talked about and sometimes treatable, depending upon its individualized severity. It is estimated that over 27% of our combat troops are experiencing this trauma (revised upward from the previous figure of 20%, per VA statistics) and there are even high-ranking officers that have personally experienced its effects, such as discussed in these MS Word files, Army Maj. Gen. David Blackledge and 4-Star Gen. Carter Ham .

Regulations -
Virtually every procedure in the military is directed by a regulation. The Department of Defense (DoD) issues "Directives" and "Instructions" that establish general policies for all of the Services: the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, and Air Force. (The Marine Corps, which we refer to as a Service, is actually a part of the Navy. The Coast Guard, while only a part of the DoD during times of war, also follows DoD policy regarding discharges.)
The Services implement DoD policies with their own, often differing, regulations based on their own unique traditions and policies. The Army issues "Regulations," the Navy, Air Force, and Coast Guard issue "Instructions," and the Marine Corps issues "Orders." The result is literally thousands of regulations.
The sheer number of military regulations is overwhelming, not just for civilian outsiders but often to commanders as well. It is not unusual for the practices at a unit to contradict regulatory policy. In such cases, citing regulatory policy to a client's commander might result in a unit following proper procedures when processing a client.
More commonly, military regulations are so ambiguous, or allow for such broad command discretion, that they do not provide concrete policy guidance. However, even in such situations knowledge of military regulations can add greatly to a counselor's credibility with a commander. Arguments based on regulations, even when the regulations are vague, will carry more weight.

Adverse Situations, or, You're Up Against It!!!
What if you are someone experiencing a sincere "change of heart" while in service and, because they don't know of Conscientious Objector applications or, worse yet, such an application being ignored by your command structure, you go AWOL and are eventually listed as a disserter?
Or, you are having to serve under someone with whom you have a strong personality clash or, again worse yet, may even be a bit unbalanced. In either case, you can't legally just quit, as in civilian life. Command structures have been known to simply tell the "underdog" to "suck it up," but there is still the potential of going to the local Judge Advocate General (JAG) office to file a complaint. The key in any of these cases is to "document, document, document!"
In any case, a good reference before things get out of hand in such situations is a little book called "The Antiwar Soldier," by Jonathon Hutto.

Advancement -
Understand that, within each service, there are prejudices that can enhance or limit a person's advancement. The "enhancing professions" within the three main services are:

• Within the Navy (including the Marines), submariners, SEALs and pilots have the "inside track" on promotions.
• Within the Army, its the Green Berets and other Special Forces (whatever titles they go under at the time).
• Within the Air Force (and I can attest to this on a first-hand basis - Don Chapin, VFP156), it's pilots of fighters, then bombers, then cargo planes, then navigators.

• Section 9a.(1) of the current enlistment contract (and all known previous versions) states that the enlistee is "Required to obey all lawful orders and perform all assigned duties." The problem, however, as so strongly pointed out in the Nuremberg trials after WWII, is that those on the bottom of the totem pole and in spur-of-the-moment decisions so often have a difficult time differentiating between "lawful" and "unlawful" orders. The tendency is to "do what you're told" to get along with the command hierarchy. (This training is counted upon in combat situations, even to the extent of killing obvious non-combatants. An enlistee that doesn't go along with such commands might be on the receiving end of "friendly fire," which is later blamed on "the enemy.")
  
• If, in any of the services, you work for a performance-rating civilian (who typically has no idea of how inflated the military rating systems historically are) then your chances of promotion take another major "hit."
  
• If you happen to be female, expect repeated sexual attempts and, possibly, some attacks. Ref: http://www.alternet.org/story/35792/ and many other similar accounts.
  
• Another drawback within the commissioned ranks is having too much enlisted time (with very few exceptions)... up to about three years is "acceptable," and, in some cases considered quite favorably, but anything beyond that is generally a "negative" to officer review boards.

Culture -

• Politically - and sociologically - Those that rise to the more advanced ranks are typically to the right of center, and larger defense manufacturers hire these people in virtual droves as they retire, tremendously enhancing the military/industrial complex paradigm that President Eisenhower warned the nation about in his exit speech. Therefore, if you make the military a career, you will most likely be a moderate-to-strong Republican in leanings and outlook.
  
• Religion - Recruiters, to date, have been generally far more successful in their efforts in the South than other parts of the country, therefore conservative Christian recruits that stay in may be more evangelically oriented than main stream America. This situation has resulted in "scandals" in the service academies in the past, where officer trainees have been "encouraged" to attend Christian or even evangelical services, and occasionally even reached the enlisted ranks as in these articles (in MS Word).
• Accompanied (Overseas) Assignments - The spouse of a military member stationed overseas typically has a LOT of spare time on their hands, particularly if there are no rug-rompers in the family. Beware of boredom! Spouses HAVE to find something constructive they can become involved with. Examples:

  A flight crew member in Puerto Rico, returning from an "extended" mission in Europe, had a fight with his spouse. He angerially left their on-base house, eventially asking a local taxi driver to "take him to the best one on the base" (these drivers had their own network). When the taxi drove up in front of this flight crew member's own house (the inverted milk bottle on the front stoop indicated "availability"), a divorce was inevitable.
  Living off base in Puerto Rico was another education, where the local populance was quite aware of frustrated military housewives that, left alone all day, became "available."

However, some of us can also attest to the fact that there can be benefits to a military enlistment (once you make it past what some of us see as the traumas of boot camp :-), but you have to be careful and often search them out yourself. Examples - by Don Chapin, VFP156:

(1) I was being extremely bitter about the military during my first three years in service due to what I saw - as many others have - the lies from my recruiter. This open bitterness delayed my third stripe until after I re-enlisted on a gamble to try taking advantage of a very little-known education and commissioning program. I succeeded and earned a B.S. and M.S. in engineering while still in uniform (this also resulted in a "demotion" from an E-5 to an O-1 :-). This kind of program is typically not internally advertised within the services, but each one has its own version.
(2) My eldest son, who no longer wanted me to help him negotiate with the Army recruiters when he found out he could get a six-week fire-fighting course (but "only" with a six-year commitment - HA!), finally did take my advice to volunteer for anything and everything he could. While he failed the tests for OCS, he came out as a fire fighter and a jump-qualified paramedic, and married to a parachute packer from his last duty station.

A flight crew member in Puerto Rico, returning from an "extended" mission in Europe, had a fight with his spouse. He angerially left their on-base house, eventially asking a local taxi driver to "take him to the best one on the base" (these drivers had their own network). When the taxi drove up in front of this flight crew member's own house (the inverted milk bottle on the front stoop indicated "availability"), a divorce was inevitable.
Living off base in Puerto Rico was another education, where the local populance was quite aware of frustrated military housewives that, left alone all day, became "available."