Does anyone remember..............

[mrmpa]

my boyfriend was discharged from the Marines in '68. He remembers receiving along with his DD 214 a pink military ID. Does anyone out there remember receiving a "pink" military ID? If so what was it good for?

[TomSlick]

1. Reserve IDs used to be pink (officially red). It really chapped reservists.

Maybe when your boyfriend was discharged he was transferred to the Marine Reserves? You can be in the Individual Reserve and never have to go to a meeting, etc.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

2. I can recall seeing a military ID card that was pink, not the standard green

that was for someone on active duty. I think the pink one might have indicated a reserve status, although I'm not sure.

[NeoGreen]

3. It was issued if his orginal enlistment...

...was less than his legal "military/service obligation" which has been changed over time by congress (6-years when I enlisted in 1984, and now I think it is 8-years).

So if you enlisted for 4-years, during the period of the 6-year obligation, after you completed that 4-year term you would be issued an ID for the Ready Reserve (RR) for the remaining 2-years. During that time you could be re-called in the event of a national emergency.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ready_Reserve

The RR is different than either the National Guard (State) or Reserves (National).

[Victor_c3]

4. The RR (or IRR when I was in) is no joke

(IRR = individual ready reserve)

I got out of the army on 31 OCT 2007, started a civilian job, bought a house, and my wife was pregnant with our first child - all within about 4 months. Life was going great for me and in June 2008, I got a certified letter from the DOA calling me to active duty for “400 days, unless extended”. I was to report to Fort Benning in September for readiness training and subsequent deployment to Iraq.

That event flipped a switch in my head and I went totally off-the-rails crazy and it was the start of my PTSD getting kind of serious.

I ended up not getting deployed as I think I scared the crap out of them as I would call the office handling IRR recalls daily and rant on the phone about murdering Iraqis, asking them if they thought that I hadn’t killed enough Iraqis for the nation when I was in Iraq in 2004, and eventually I told them that if they were going to send me to Iraq that I’d go to the local recruiting station, shoot myself, and make a scene. I was dead serious (pun not intended, but it sure works!), but I was never planning on shooting anyone else. I might have issues with suicide, but even in my craziest of states I’ve never thought of hurting anyone else.

Anyways, I expected the cops to come to my house and take me away, but that didn’t happen. The IRR people kept trying to call me and I wouldn’t answer the phone. The next morning I got a handwritten note overnighted to me from some 0-6 telling me to get psychiatric help and giving me a certificate of honorable discharge!

I’m almost certain that the recordings they have of my calls were probably used for training to demonstrate how to (or how not to) handle a crazy vet getting ready to face recall to active duty.