As someone at the start of your adult life, or at the earliest stages of choosing your career path, you may find that life has a habit of placing a few paths too many in front of you.
As someone without the life experience to make well-judged decisions, each can seem just as viable as the last – making it extremely difficult for you to see the ‘right’ route forward.
One route, which around 11,000 of us took between March 2022 and March 2023, was to join the armed forces. If you are seriously considering such a move, you should understand some of the main pros and cons associated with military service.
The Pros
The major benefit presented by starting a career in the Armed Forces is that of stability. For those with the aptitude for military service, there are many opportunities for growth and progression – with the eventual opportunity to become responsible for others beneath you. These successive ranks come with financial rewards, too – financial security for yourself and your family being another benefit, and a key motivator for many new enlistees.
There are also those of us that feel we owe a debt to the society in which we live. Providing for – and assisting in – the security of the nation is an emphatic aspect of many recruitment drives. The sense of duty that active service provides can be enough for the patriotic amongst us to feel drawn to service.
The Cons
Though there are some visible benefits to joining the military, there are also numerous demerits that should be considered – particularly if you as a potential enlistee have family to provide for at home. The key demerit to joining the military is the significantly heightened risk to physical or mental health that service entails. PTSD is a debilitating, chronic mental health condition that affects nearly twice as many servicepeople as it does regular citizens.
Another major risk which should not be discounted is the risk of accidental injury in service – something made possible by poor conduct in barracks or on duty, and which can have just as devastating consequences for a veteran as combat injuries can. In these instances, there is recourse for compensation via counsel with military solicitors, but what was lost can never truly be regained. This is also true for time, particularly time spent with your family. Serving in the Armed Forces means extended periods of leave, meaning you could miss some major life milestones.
The Rub
With all the above to consider, then, should you elect to enlist in the Armed Forces? Answering this question definitively is complex, if not near-impossible; there are many personal circumstances to take into consideration when making such a major life decision, with even small differences in how you live making for a major shift in what may be the best choice for you.
For some, Armed Forces enlistment is an indispensable opportunity to find structure and rigour, to develop key skills and to do so without risking financial endangerment. However, the structural, ethical, medical and mental-health-related issues associated with training and active service make the benefits of such an opportunity difficult to reconcile for many.
