How did you end up in your military job?

Bobi Pike-Oates walked into the Air Force in 1976 with a résumé and a plan.

“I had been a deputy sheriff and I wanted to be a security forces and they go, ‘No, we have something much more challenging. Aircraft maintenance.’”

Hear it at 1:41

She said okay. She was a farm girl from Vermont and could lift the toolbox. She stuck with maintenance for 23 years and retired a Senior Master Sergeant.

If you are about to sign something, that is the story in miniature. You bring a plan. The service brings a list. In interviews filmed by Vegas Veteran Voices, a Las Vegas nonprofit, eleven Veterans told us how they landed in the job that ended up on their paperwork. Some picked it. Some were handed it. The ones who cared least about the choice are not always the ones who came out worst.

The test, and what it is for

The Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery is the test everyone takes. Its official site says one set of scores decides whether you can enlist at all, and that scores across the whole test are used for military job assignment. So the number matters twice.

Michael D’Angelo, a Marine Corps Veteran, machine gunner and stand-up comic, took his by accident, as a high school freshman.

“They were like, ‘Who wants to take the ASVAB?’ And I was like, ‘What’s that?’ They’re like, ‘You’re going to miss periods 2, four, and six.’ I was like, ‘I’ll do it.’”

Hear it at 9:52

He says he guessed on every question, went to sleep and scored a 78. The score was still on file when he walked into the recruiting office.

A good score opens doors. It does not make you walk through them. Maximilian Uriarte, a Marine Corps infantry Veteran and the creator of Terminal Lance, came back to the recruiting station to a recruiter holding his results.

“He’s like, ‘You don’t have to go infantry. You could do anything you want with your scores.’ And I was like, ‘I want infantry.’”

Hear it at 16:53

His reasoning: “I’d have joined the Air Force or something, be treated better and eat better food.” Hear it at 17:09

You pick, and then they pick

Jason Brooks, a medically retired Marine and former Recon and SERE instructor, scored high and went to the Air Force first, to be a pararescueman. He needed waivers for trouble he got into as a kid, and the recruiter told him that meant coming in under the needs of the Air Force, which right then needed aviation mechanics. Brooks tried to bargain.

“Let me try out for PJ. If I don’t make it, then I’ll go be your aviation mechanic.”

Hear it at 3:28

No deal. He walked across to the Marine recruiter.

Edward Haines, a retired Marine Master Sergeant in signals intelligence, says the needs of the Marine Corps do not stop at the contract. You arrive as the new guy who has not proven anything.

“You just show up and they’re like, ‘Well, I need a SCIF guard, so that’s you. Go sit in that room and check IDs.’”

Hear it at 19:53

Then there is the open contract, which is the phrase to listen for. Greg Cope White, author of The Pink Marine, went in on one with a list of fields and communications circled in his head. He got it, and became a field wireman. Why communications?

“The only reason I picked that field was my mother at the time was married to someone who worked at a radio station and that was communications.”

Hear it at 13:17

Alfred Brenner, a Purple Heart recipient and retired Marine Corps K9 handler, watched what happens when it goes the other way. Nobody learned their exact job until the training after boot camp, he says, when the list was read out loud. One Marine in his group had signed up thinking military police. By Brenner’s account his contract named the field and not the job, and the field includes corrections.

“I remember one kid, he was with us and he started crying because he told him he was going to corrections.”

Hear it at 13:58

Brenner’s recruiter had written the exact job into his. He does not take credit for that.

Some people chose with their whole heart

Daniel Coffeen, a U.S. Army Veteran and Ranger School graduate, wanted to fly Apache attack helicopters. His mother thought that sounded dangerous. So he pitched her on flying medevac instead, since those helicopters carry no guns.

“She’s like, ‘Oh, so people just shoot at you and you can’t shoot back at them?’”

Hear it at 18:14

He commissioned into the Medical Service Corps.

Jason Lee Morrison, a Marine Corps Veteran and Recon Marine, was aiming at the Naval Academy. “I wanted to be a fighter pilot, you know, Top Gun and all that.” Hear it at 16:02 He could not get the medical paperwork done from overseas, so he enlisted in the Marine Corps as, in his words, guaranteed infantry.

And Raivadus Gill, an Iraq combat Veteran, was walking past a bulletin board with his recruiter when he saw a photo of a soldier aiming a missile at an aircraft.

“So that’s how I picked my job. Stinger missile.”

Hear it at 42:57

He adds that he had no idea what the job actually was.

And some got it right by accident

Lucky Lopez, an Army National Guard Veteran, already owned a repair shop when he enlisted. “Everybody was picking water filtration specialist or something weird. I ended up picking a mechanic.” Hear it at 3:44 A sensible match, with one surprise.

“When you’re in the military and you train to be a mechanic, you’re not allowed to touch the cars. It’s only civilians.”

Hear it at 4:30

By his account the motor pool played a great deal of poker.

Which brings it back to Brenner, who chose military police because it was the only job on the list that made sense to him. Halfway through that school, the school announced a selection for dog handlers. You had to volunteer, interview and be at the top of the class.

“I’m like, I hate dogs. Like, I’m not doing that.”

Hear it at 14:38

Then he heard it was a top-tier thing, for the best of the class, and that overseas the dogs get air conditioning. At that point, he agrees, it was spite. Six of them were sent on to the dog school in Texas.

“So did the K9 and best decision I ever did in my entire life.”

Hear it at 15:07

That is the pattern in these eleven. The plan mattered less than they expected. Pike-Oates did not get her first choice and spent a career at the second. Brenner did not want a dog and built his life around one. The one place the difference showed up, in Brenner’s telling, was a single line on a contract: it named a job for him and only a field for the Marine standing next to him.