Are you glad you got out, or do you wish you'd stayed in?

Michael D’Angelo, a Marine Corps Veteran, machine gunner and stand-up comic, was telling us how strange the Corps felt near the end of his time. He remembers what he thought on the way out:

“I’m kind of glad I’m getting out.”

Next sentence. Same breath.

“I kind of regret getting out now because I would be retiring.”

Hear it at 58:39

That is the honest answer, and it is two answers. If you are staring at reenlistment paperwork, or you signed out years ago and still run the numbers at red lights, we cannot settle it for you. What we can do is tell you what fifteen Veterans said in interviews filmed by Vegas Veteran Voices, a Las Vegas nonprofit. They split. But when we lined them up, the split was not random. How a Veteran feels about leaving has a lot to do with who made the call.

The ones who did not get a vote

Jason Brooks, a medically retired Marine who was a Recon and SERE instructor, was hurt in Iraq in 2003, had several surgeries, and was retired in 2005. He did not ask to go.

“I was medically retired. I didn’t want to get out. I mean, that hurt me more than most things I’ve been through.”

Hear it at 35:15

He has a way of measuring it.

“I’ve got five ex-wives and being medically retired was worse than getting divorced for me.”

Hear it at 35:26

Alfred Brenner, a Purple Heart recipient and retired Marine Corps K9 handler, was wounded in Afghanistan. When he was well enough to be asked what he wanted, he had an answer ready.

“They were like what do you want to do with your life? Stay in. I’m like I’m gonna go back to my unit. I want to train with them.”

Hear it at 43:04

He was medically retired instead. Years on:

“Looking back I wish I stayed in. I would have been retired by now.”

Hear it at 50:29

Erik Schreiner, a Marine Corps Veteran who works at Adrenaline Mountain, was not hurt. His mother had breast cancer, and he went home to take care of her.

“I did not want to leave and I had to choose.”

Hear it at 10:17

He says the choice was not close. “Mom wins hands down.” He also says that once he was out, in 1998, he wanted back in.

Hear it at 10:53

Three Marines. None of them picked the day. All three would have stayed.

The math nobody does at 22

D’Angelo’s regret has a dollar sign on it, so here is the arithmetic. Under the older retirement systems, only people who serve 20 years get a retirement benefit, and according to Military OneSource, the Department of Defense’s own help desk, that means about 81 percent of service members leave with none. Anyone who joined after January 2018 is in the Blended Retirement System instead, where a savings plan goes with you after two years. The pension is still a 20-year prize. Leave at 19 and the same page says you get no pension payment.

Jo MT’s father explained it to him without a chart. Jo MT is a U.S. Air Force Veteran who loaded bombs for 20 years and now does stand-up. The advice, as he tells it, was to do four or six years and learn everything you can, or:

“Do your 20 and make sure that they pay you for the rest of your life.”

Hear it at 4:39

Some people never decide at all. Bobi Pike-Oates, a retired Air Force Senior Master Sergeant, did not plan on a career in aircraft maintenance.

“I didn’t really know what I wanted to do. So, I just reenlisted. I wanted to go to school and then I just kept reenlisting and just stayed.”

Hear it at 4:50

That went on for 23 years. She was going to retire as a Master Sergeant. Then she made E-8.

“Nope, I’m staying. I worked too long, too hard, and plus it was a rank higher than my ex-husband.”

Hear it at 20:48

We have heard worse reasons to reenlist. Most of them involved a truck.

Twenty, and not one day more

Then there are the people who had every reason to stay and walked.

Jo MT did his 20 years and five days. He says he could have kept going. He left because of a question he used to put to the chiefs and master sergeants who had stayed for 25, 26, 30 years: what do you wish you had done more of? He says the answer was always the same.

“I wish I would have spent more time with my family when they were younger.”

Hear it at 17:41

Randall Parkes, a Marine Corps Veteran, drill instructor and founding MARSOC Raider, was selected for Sergeant Major. That is the top of the enlisted ladder. He wanted an operational unit. The assignment he was offered was not that.

“He ends up telling me I’m going to like first Bed Bath and Beyond Battalion, like on main side.”

Hear it at 38:35

By then he was halfway through a business program for Veterans and had seen the other side of the fence.

“Not only is it greener, but they water it twice a day, they cut it twice a week, and it even like feels better between your toes.”

Hear it at 39:27

“Unless I get what I want, I’m out,” he says. He retired.

Hear it at 39:35

Ross D. Bryant, a U.S. Army Veteran who leads UNLV Military and Veteran Services, liked training cadets. He saw what came next on the career path.

“But now I’m going to go to the Pentagon and make PowerPoints and get yelled at.”

Hear it at 23:54

He retired too. None of these three sounds haunted. They picked the day, and they can tell you why in one sentence.

Your chief has never been out

Emilio Mackie, a U.S. Navy Veteran and surface warfare officer, left at the end of his contract.

“I knew that I wanted to get out because I knew that I was capable of something else, and I knew that I got everything I wanted out of service.”

Hear it at 30:06

He remembers the speech you get when you say that out loud. The shopping cart. The needles. He has thought about who gives it.

“You’re taking advice from people who haven’t done the thing you’re about to do.”

Hear it at 31:11

Fair. Now hear the other side from a man who did 20. Edward Haines, a retired Marine Master Sergeant who spent his career in signals intelligence, had a standing answer for junior Marines.

“Everybody’s like, I’m going to get out cuz I hate this, this, and that. I was like, dude, you’re going to hate your jobs in civilian world anyways.”

Hear it at 39:29

Travis Jewell, a Marine Corps Veteran, mortarman and comedy creator, ran that experiment. He got out in 2019 because of one platoon commander.

“It was never like I hate the Marine Corps. It was never that. I love the Marine Corps. I loved it. I just didn’t like the leadership.”

Hear it at 29:11

He had a plan and he does not take it back. He does report what he found out here.

“If anybody gets anything taken away from this, the bad leadership is always going to be there. It’s always going to be there.”

Hear it at 30:16

So Mackie is right about who is giving the speech, and Haines is right about what is waiting. Both things are true on the same Tuesday.

What they actually regret

Listen closely and almost nobody regrets leaving in general. They regret one specific thing they did not do first.

Jewell:

“One of my biggest regrets was not doing drill instructor, but I had to get out so I couldn’t do eight years.”

Hear it at 27:35

Daniel Coffeen, a U.S. Army Veteran, Ranger School graduate and Medical Service Corps officer, had orders for Special Forces selection and went to a career course instead.

“The worst part was that I lied to myself and I said, ‘I’ll just do it some other time.’”

Hear it at 30:30

“The military literally stopped being fun the day I decided to not go to special forces selection.”

Hear it at 31:13

He stayed in for years after that. The leaving was not the loss. The loss had already happened.

The door that stays open a crack

Jamie Waterberry, an Air Force Veteran who works in corporate philanthropy, went from active duty to the Reserve and then, with a one-year-old at home and her husband on his fourth deployment, separated for good. She says it was not a hard call. What she noticed was the people who went from everything to nothing overnight.

“You see a lot of people that get off of active duty and completely shut out. There’s no more military anything, and that really affects their life.”

Hear it at 26:27

The Reserve, in her words, gives you a little bit of a cushion. Bruce Cardenas, a Marine Corps Veteran who went on to the LAPD, did four years active and seven or eight in the Reserve, until kids and weekends collided. He calls letting it go one of his regrets.

“The Marine Corps was the best thing I ever did.”

Hear it at 11:28

The thought does not always stay a thought. In our 4th of July special, in the middle of a conversation about drones, this came out:

“I tried to go back in. I looked it up.”

Hear it at 15:47

The obstacle, as told there, was tattoos. A lot of them would have had to come off.

And Nate Rosas, a U.S. Army Veteran who served in Afghanistan, says that to this day he thinks about going back in. He also thinks he knows what the thought is made of.

“If you don’t find those other vets, I feel like you lean on that idea of going back in more than if you find a community.”

Hear it at 31:14

So which is it?

No verdict. Fifteen people, and D’Angelo alone took both sides. But look at where the peace is. Parkes, Bryant, Jo MT, Mackie, Waterberry: they chose the day and they knew the reason. Look at where the ache is. Brooks, Brenner, Schreiner: somebody else chose. And in between, the ones who chose fine and still carry a single unfinished thing. A drill instructor tour. A selection course. A pension.

That is a pattern in what our guests said. It is not a rule and it is not advice. Brooks would be the first to tell you the bad version is survivable. He now teaches firearms for a living and works security around professional fights, which he calls a dream.

“When I got medically retired in ‘05 and pretty much thought my life was over, that was 20 years ago.”

Hear it at 38:20