I am currently serving in the Infantry and soon going to be deployed to Iraq. This is my first post on these forums, but I have been reading them for over a year and I am an avid fan. I became an Objectivist in the military and a lot of what is being said about the robot mentality in the Army is inherently false. Most of the time your leaders will give you a task that needs to be accomplished and let their subordinates figure out with their own minds how to accomplish the task, It is what the Army calls "Adaptive Thinking".
The way the Infantry works is the man best suited for a leadership position gets it purely because of his ability. I know that I have had several Platoon Sergeants get relieved of command because they could not handle it and they have been replaced by somebody better and lower ranking than them. In the Army especially in the combat MOS's you have to have good leader that gets the job done, because if you don't people die. I just wanted to comment on that because of the experience I have. Just remember when you think of the Army do not automatically assume we are mindless robots.
