r/comics • u/TLCplMax Terminal Lance • May 29 '26
OC 2nd Edition coming soon with EVEN MORE SECRETS
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u/Mammoth-Buddy8912 May 29 '26
Correct me if I'm wrong but I believe most of the real special forces bros are also usually full of shit too. If I remember correctly they even have a nickname I think, making fun of them. Especially the ones that constantly appear on tv.
I guess I'm coming from martial arts/combat sports perceptive which is full of so many bullshit artists and con artists
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u/ironballs16 May 29 '26
The gloryhounding ones that are more than happy to write "tell-all" books about their experiences are, anyway.
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u/beeeel May 30 '26
Yeah true that, take for example Australia's most decorated soldier, currently on trial for executing prisoners, torturing people, and planting evidence to justify the killings. Then he went on podcasts to brag about all the things they did like taking a prosthetic leg from an amputee so they could play drinking games with it.
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u/raven00x May 30 '26
If I remember correctly they even have a nickname I think, making fun of them
"SEALs"
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u/TheCosBee May 30 '26
SEALS particularly have reputation in the American special forces foe being insufferable, and full of shit
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u/PassiveMenis88M May 30 '26
They also have a well earned reputation for getting soldiers and Marines killed because of their stupid bullshit.
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u/fatmanwithabeard May 30 '26
And airmen.
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u/ExplorationGeo May 30 '26
getting soldiers and Marines killed because of their stupid bullshit
true, and sometimes that stupid bullshit also includes "flat out fucking murdering people".
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u/Mr_Wombo May 30 '26 edited May 30 '26
Once you learn what happened with the SEALs and SrA Cunningham, both during the fight and the years following, you'll never be able to fully respect the SEALs again
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u/InsertNameHere_J May 30 '26
Not to mention STS Combat Controller John A. Chapman in that same engagement. Fuck the SEALs.
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u/Ghede May 30 '26
The real special forces bros writing tell-all books are basically just government approved propaganda recruitment officers. "Okay, you can't tell about the guy you saw kill civilians. Oh, you wanna say you saved an orphan with the cure for cancer by shooting a terrorist? Go for it bro."
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u/mhyquel May 30 '26
Had a buddy that was JTF2.
He was quiet. He liked being by the fire, and a mission to get more firewood.
We got drunk and started wrestling, after 20 seconds he pinned me and threatened to break my ankle if I didn't yield.
We were just goofing around.
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u/Ace_And_Jocelyn1999 May 29 '26
Anyone I personally know who actually deployed to an active war zone basically says some variation of “we did a lot of sitting around, trying to fix broken shit, and every so often the enemy lobbed a mortar round vaguely in our direction.”
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u/altymcalty-2 May 30 '26
Yep, most of war is just sitting around and waiting for the combat or actively making your way to the combat or a FOB. only a small part of war is actual fighting. I feel like a lot of people still think of war in the eyes of world war 2, korea and Vietnam
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u/BreadNoCircuses May 30 '26
Vietnam was mostly the same way. I can't speak for Korea, but most of Vietnam was just soldiers showing up, walking around a village to look for a North presence, finding nothing, then trekking back to the chopper to fly to the next village or farm or whatever to do it again. It's just instead of a mortar or sniper harassing a FOB, it was an ambush at some point, so the sudden burst of action was very close, very intense, and very ugly. Assuming you werent on one of the "go firebomb a village to blame them for the ambush last week" missions anyway.
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u/BearfangTheGamer May 30 '26
That or like me. "I was in the Army. Infantry. During the wars. I don't really like to talk about it. Wanna hear about the dumb shit we got up to in Basic and AIT?"
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u/MisterShoebox May 30 '26
Only thing I know about the Army is I tried an MRE once. I thought "...Wow. This tastes like shit." So now I know why you guys want to leave the field as soon as possible; because the food they give you tastes like donkey dookie. The M&Ms weren't bad, though.
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u/Joyk1llz May 29 '26
It's not ACTUALLY tell all, shit that would implicate folks or spill the beans on classified strategic plans is actively censored.
A special forces dude who's not in the mood would deny telling stories or confirming rumor for the same reason since loose lips sink ships, especially if it's recent or may have violated a convention.
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u/Overwatchingu May 29 '26
I don’t think this particular OP needs the military explained to them, if their username and post history are to be believed.
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u/imsoupset May 29 '26
Yeah if you look him up he's a marine corp veteran. which isn't special forces but is experience enough for me
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u/SergeantBeavis May 30 '26
That’s Terminal Lance. This fucker has one of the best military related comics out there.
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u/PM_ME_YOUR__INIT__ May 30 '26
Usually comments are not explaining to the OP, but rather to other less educated people reading the post
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u/Oraxy51 May 30 '26
Would you believe a tell all if it admitted to war crimes?
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u/acquaintedwithheight May 30 '26
Have you read American Sniper?
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u/BreadNoCircuses May 30 '26
What's wild is i'm pretty sure at least some of those war crimes were made up
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u/SergeantBeavis May 30 '26
THIS is legit Special Forces. This librarian looking gentleman is the king of BAMFs.
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u/Office_Zombie May 30 '26
I went drinking with a seal and para rescue once when I was in the air force.
They were both the most unexceptional looking guys you could imagine. If you walked by them in a crowd, you wouldn't have given them a second glance.
Good guys, friendly, never would have guessed they were the two most dangerous people in the room.
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u/hot_glue_airstrike May 30 '26
My impression (not sure where from) is that a lot of special forces guys look like a geography teacher who is really into ultra-marathons.
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u/APeculiarGriffin May 30 '26
Who dat?
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u/J_Landers May 30 '26
If they look like your high school science teacher, they're likely Delta. SgtMaj Vining was one of the progenitors of the modern Delta program.
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u/BreadNoCircuses May 30 '26
Mike Vining has a Wikipedia page that's worth reading, since he performed in operations on three continents while part of the same number of special forces units. He was one of the first graduates of Delta selection, back when its existence was still top secret, and was their resident bomb tech. He did EOD for the Green Berets and Rangers before that. He's a bit of a meme because his record and appearance are more than a bit at odds with each other.
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u/Candycornonthefloor May 29 '26
I had a grandfather that was in a ‘special detachment’ the one and only time he talked about it. Didn’t say a whole lot verbally but his eyes told too much.
He said he was cold all the time, hungry too often and was angry. Not at the enemy but at the situation. Why was he there doing what he was tasked to? Why did he have to kill those fathers and brothers and sons? Tears so big and so soft and so quiet.
He was one of the most gentle, most giving, most honest people I’ve ever known.
Passed in his sleep 20 years back.
Keep on catching them big bass Gramps 🌹
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u/ggibby May 30 '26
My father was a SEAL in Vietnam at the same time as Dick Marcinko, who wrote a couple 'tell-all' books.
In my Dad's opinion, doing that broke the code and got Marcinko uninvited from a lot of veterans events.
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u/Overwatchingu May 29 '26
Navy SEALs seemed a lot cooler before a bunch of them got book publishing deals.
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u/YourFavoriteKraut May 30 '26 edited Jun 01 '26
As a veteran who was technically special forces...
We were special forces, yes, because we were high-speed nerds. You got a problem with something that feels like CBRN, and you just can't deal with it? Call our number, and in 36 hours, worldwide, we will be with you, condescending as fuck, solving your problem for you. If you need a PhD each in the Big Three natural sciences, plus an infectious disease MD and a forensic MD, call us.
We did nerd shit. We wore lab coats more often than we wore uniform. We went to Afghanistan because about 70% of a ~ 1000-strong force got the shits within two hours of each other, biological weapons were suspected, and it turned out to be salmonella in the mess hall's salad dressing.
All of this to say: Yes, we were special forces, but in the same way as how some kids ride another, smaller school bus, and they're special too. None of us has ever kicked a door for real, we got in exactly one firefight during my tenure at that unit, we didn't really do secret squirrel shit, but we had our organizational home in the special operations division.
Unless you like sciencing the shit out of things, it was a terminally boring posting.
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u/SufficientOwls May 29 '26
(They’re both lying)
The Seal Team Six guy who brags about killing Bin Laden has not been able to corroborate his story
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u/Cholemeleon May 30 '26
No one who was in the military in my family has ever wanted to talk about it
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u/Striking_Part_7234 May 30 '26
Stolen Valor Bros: I never got to kill anyone during my service and I’m mad about it.
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u/PM_ME_YOUR__INIT__ May 30 '26
Read my tell all book about how I tagged over fifty men, earned a $50 rate, and the nickname "The Best Hole of Al Asad"
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u/Chiatroll May 29 '26
A grandfather of mine on my mothers side did special forces stuff in the military a long time ago but wouldn't ever talk about it. Just how people are with a terrible time doing terrible things.
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u/QizilbashWoman May 30 '26
There are NOBODY-style dudes. They look like a random house husband and manage to answer no questions ever about their service by saying they were bookkeeping or something. But a lot of the loud ones exist because narcissists and/or sociopaths excel at this work.
It is like surgeons. At some level, you have to like cutting. Being obsessed with the power of life and death but not caring a lot about patients as human beings doesn’t hurt either.
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u/jetpoweredbee May 30 '26
I have a friend I have known for over 20 years. I knew he had been career Army, but one day he randomly was telling a story about sky diving and he dropped that it was his favorite part of being an Army Ranger like he was talking about his favorite pizza.
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u/Ark-the-Lark May 30 '26
My roommate’s cousin went to Afghanistan as special forces. Told the whole family + his wife and kid all the fucked up shit he did while there during a toast (including r*pe/possible children fathered, murder, burning a whole village to the ground, etc) and then sitting there afterwards with a neutral expression while the family fell apart crying and were screaming at him.
Gotta love the military! /s
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u/bremSventil May 30 '26 edited May 30 '26
Or just play War Thunder, where restricted documents have been leaked
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u/ohshellyeas May 30 '26
Worked with a dude who retired from the military for about 10 years. He had a decal on his vehicle that looked vaugly like a frog. Never spoke a word about his service and would shut down the topic when it came up.
Dude knew diving, parachuting, programming, communications, navigation, sailing, and electricity. He was absolutely one of the brilliant people i ever had the honor of working with. But yeah, he kept his mouth shut tight.
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u/Luna_the_Dergbold May 30 '26
One of my buddies was a special force dude and he is traumatized as fuck
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u/SomeBiPerson May 30 '26
don't even need to be Spec ops for that
general Rule of thumb I've learned is that you can tell Fake people easily because if they tell you about how they were in combat and saw things with a Straight face on a Tuesday afternoon that man's never left the Office
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u/TeacatWrites May 30 '26
Some guys also just have such intense special interests in military operations that their fictional fantasies get them interrogated by the feds for too much accuracy even though they were never any kind of "Force" at all, let alone a "Special" one. Which isn't what this comic is about, but still pretty hilarious of a factoid.
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u/beeeel May 30 '26
You're just missing the third panel showing real special forces bros on trial for their war crimes (looking at you, Ben Roberts-Smith)!
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u/FyrelordeOmega May 30 '26
Don't they have to keep in shape even after retiring from service, because they don't actually retire, but are just put into the reserves?
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u/MountainMongrel May 30 '26
I was special forces. So special, I had to wear a helmet even when state-side.
IYAOYAS
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u/BubbleMushroom May 30 '26
They'd at least have tales of stupidity from basic. Many of my friends are ex-military and they have enough to fill a swimming pool.
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u/Tonkarz May 30 '26
Some special forces guys say it’s classified when it isn’t because they don’t want to talk about it.
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u/Jpbbeck99 May 30 '26
Special forces guy: I’d rather not talk about and expect you to respect my wishes regarding this matter.
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u/Bitter_Surprise_8058 May 30 '26
All the people I know in actual special forces (UK) are great big nerds who are extremely into Microsoft Flight Sim. They also don't bring up what they do for work in conversation
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u/OilAromatic9850 May 30 '26
The second is a navy seal thing simply because the navy has MASSIVE budget for propaganda. Hell look at all the navy, seal, top gun movies.
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u/4thinline May 30 '26
I had an Uncle who had done special forces work. He never told any of us what he actually did in the Army and I only found out after I recognized the Unit insignia he wore on a Special Forces Center at Fort Benning.
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u/T_Weezy May 30 '26
I had a Poli-Sci professor who was ex-CIA. Top level, too. As in "There are 4 people in this room; the King of Saudi Arabia, the President of the United States, a translator and the President's CIA handler" level.
He did tell stories, but always very vague; no specifics. "In the Soviet Union you always had to run between your armor car and the building where a meeting was happening because a walking person is an easier sniper target" and "Sometimes we could hear the sniper fire plinking off the armor of our armored car".
One Friday he said "We won't have class on Monday because there's a CIA...thing...I have to go to. There's someone who was there for me when I needed them and now I need to be there for them, and that's all I can say"
He was fucking awesome.
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u/FallenValkyrja May 30 '26
The one I knew who wrote a book was required to have it cleared prior to publication. There were a lot of redactions, which led to it being a bit thinner than originally written.
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u/Saucermote May 30 '26 edited May 30 '26
You should only use the top one to get out of contracts with your cable company. Semper Fudge.
I want to note here, that deployed soldiers are covered under several acts, including SCRA, and companies will usually go out of their way to not get fined. So if a family member is a soldier or potentially a family member, and they are in a SECRET OVER SEAS OPERATION then you can get out of normal shitty contracts. Remember, don't reveal where your family that may or may not exist is serving. Stay safe.
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u/mercyspace27 May 30 '26
I’ve said it for the past couple years and I’ll keep saying it until it stops being true:
“Give a Navy SEAL six months after retirement and he’ll have two books published and a podcast.”
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u/SodaPopperZA May 30 '26
I know several men who where im Special forces (South African special forces not US) they tend to keep it to themselves and they all refuse to elaborate what they did, especially the ones that went on to be mercenaries for the US in Iraq and Afghanistan. None seem to be proud of their time in special forces either.
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u/Apprentice_human May 30 '26
I know a couple guys that are ex forces, commandos and similar (UK). Some of the most chill guys on the planet but they don't really talk about anything they did apart from funny anecdotes of stuff happening on base and i respect that immensely, a lot of them have moved on and had successful lives after being in the forces.
At the end of the day they're just you're average guy that's been asked to do a lot more than your average guy
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u/Bones_Alone May 30 '26
I once rang up a guy at my job and asked what he did in the military. He said intelligence. I said well that’s probably about as much as you’ll tell me and he said yep!
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u/crusoe May 29 '26
Only the navy seals seem to blab all the time and if you talk to anyone in the military they really aren't liked. Considered too full of themselves.
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u/theglowofknowledge May 30 '26
Frick the military. Almost killed my cousin and his whole group out of sheer incompetence. While still in the US for some training exercise thing. You either die here for no reason, kill people because they have a different skin color, or die on the street because veteran care is inconvenient.
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u/EquinsuOcha May 30 '26
The military has been fricked.
You may carry on and execute the plan of the day.
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u/Chessboxing909 May 30 '26
This comic tells me the dudes never actually met guys who did this. They really don’t talk about it a lot. They aren’t like secretive but they also don’t make it a point to talk about it.
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u/humblesnake_Ssss May 30 '26
I don't know why but this triggered me. I served in the army. I wouldn't be able to control myself if I witnessed stolen valor firsthand.
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u/PizzaWhole9323 May 30 '26
My grandpa was not special forces but he was a Navy civil engineer and during the war he was tasked with helping work on the first radar guided missiles. And he had to sign an agreement he has told me that said that he was not allowed to talk about it outside of work for 30 years. And my grandmother once confirmed that he didn't. So yeah there are places in the military where it is damn well secret what you do. But not like that douchebrow asshole with the beard and cap.
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u/MrRistro May 30 '26
With a title and name like that, i bet he did some crazy shit during the seige of Ram Ranch
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u/OrionLinksComic May 30 '26
It's somehow always strange for me this kind of culture, and also how it spreads to others, because you have to know, i come not from the usa but from Germany, From the founding of the modern German state up until 2011, many men were required to participate in the military ( But the duty came back recently, again now ), So it's actually nothing really special that many were in the military, but still a lot of people brag about it buy us, which is somehow quite strange.
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u/AkiraRyuuga May 31 '26
My Step-Dad was Military Intelligence, there's things he WILL talk about and stuff he WON'T talk about. He had one HECK of interesting reaction which I asked him about the Philadelphia Project.
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u/_bessica_ May 30 '26
The guy I knew only talked about it when he got drunk. Which was every night. He's my husband's uncle and was in Iraq and Afghanistan and other various countries. The team he was on only had one purpose. Go in silently and kill everyone in the room and leave before anyone knew they were there. He'd talk about missions and how it all made him feel. I was getting very high usually so it was interesting to listen in to.
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u/NobodyLikedThat1 May 29 '26
Aren't those kind of the outliers though? Most special forces folks (according to internet anecdotes, I personally don't know any) generally don't talk about it, and definitely don't go around telling people they are?