Just to let you know, Israel does the same deal, they just let you know they take GRANDS from you ^.^, it's worst, it's like saying "We don't care about your crapping money, it's ours" out loud
just to update you about my situation, I get that you are considered a supporter too, I am a mechanic, I know how it feels like to have huge responsbility in your hand and no one giving a crap about it, if a driver doesn't supply, oh god what a trouble, but what if a driver doesn't have a car? or his car is stuck somewhere because no one changed its oils or took care of it's issues? cars are not my thing, I take care of the actual fighting artilary venichles, so if a warrior (that's how we call "fighters") has an issue, he can do nothing but fire a 5.56 through his m16, that's when he gives us the venichle, I also take care of the thing that supply rockets to those artilary venichles, so I know it sucks not getting all the bonuses of actually being there but also being there and doing the same thing they do if not more, I know...
atm I am corporal, my end rank is staff sergeant, I could've gone throug officers route, but it was booringily small paying (you know what I mean) and it was basically moving per 2 years, but it gets you a lot of money after the Major rank, it was 10 years to give instead of 3, 10 years of exellence too, I don't want to give this much, rather finish it at a low rank, tell me more about your rank route, I found out that there are those Non-Commissioned Officers, who are the real deal here in the army, the officers just claim their work, nothing else, they do all the job, they get less money for it, less bonuses, lower end-rank and a longer time is required to advance between rank, I like them more then the real officers, they tend to understand what the army really needs much much better then the reguler officers, and also do more then the officers, our whole army is built on the officers that claim they did the job that actually the Non-commissioned Officers do, did you finish your physical course already? I did, I also somehow got a flash programming course (What the hell is a mechanic gonna do with that? a flash-based wheel?) it was kinda fun, I wasn't sleeping in a base for a week, daily going home, for me I guess you can call it Week 40, so you are 12 weeks above me or so, if I remember correctly, in here the ones that are much closer to finish their 3 commited years (commited? more like conspiracy of must-do) tend to use it for their defense, in a funny way, everytime they need to do something or they don't do something that they are required to do, you know what sucks most? in here the army is divided to "sub-armies", there's the Paratropers, the Chief of the Army here used to be a paratropers, so they get to have a lot of respect, but they don't go through a lot according to what I've seen so far, there's the Artilary, I am in an Artilary type base, but I don't belong to the Artilary, I belong to the Ordnance Corps, in other words I am considered nothing but a mechanic, I go through much worst jobs then the actual warrios, when they are hot they get the cools I give `em, when they are cold I need to find a way to heat up their base, but take care of myself? I work in the sun daily under Artilary venichles with no actual water supply being taken care for me by the chiefs, just by my commanders, the non-thingy officer commanders, the officer commands takes it from granted that we won't by chance fade away, and trust me they've been proven wrong, yet they don't care that it might happen again, I nearly died, was lucky enough to fade in an office while taking a PC to my work-space, if I were to fade below a Artilary venichle or in the way, it might've been too late to return me into cognition, yet I like the non-thingy officer commanders very much, and I like the staff I work with (I actually sleep with most of `em too in the same room...) in here drivers and cooks are considered a very important shit, they get to not do guard-time and cooks gets to have a constant serve for 5 days/7 days in a row and then get to be at home, for 7 days, while I have to be 5/7 days per week in the base, they use it as defense to rule out that their job is toughest, well wouldn't that make courses the toughest job ever as I got to get out daily? yet it was the fastest week I ever got, second course so far, I am also aimed to have a third one, so I am kind of unimportant-with-a-lot-of-responsibilty kind of a soldier, trust me I know that if I wouldn't be around they'd be just fine, those non-thingy officer commanders are just too good to be true, nearly can take care of anything
P.S: if I get it right, 3 stars meaning (Colonel), that's freaking awesome, our Chief of the Artilary base is Colonel..