Special Forces Medical Sergeant

As the 18Delta, your mission is always real. You will either be keeping your ODA operational or winning the hearts and minds. Deltas from the groups that work in the more 3rd World regions will always do more because you'll be the best trained medical provider for miles and miles. There will always be work to perform due to accidents, disease, and environment, even in a non-combat role. A typical day on deployment involves sports medicine for teammates and counterparts, treating local populace as a Family Practitioner, maybe deliver a baby, stabilize victims of motor vehicle accidents, treat for environmental injuries including vector-borne diseases, treat team and indig training injuries, etc., etc. Then of course you also have to out-perform your brother MOSs in basic SF Soldier skills.

The worst part of being an 18Delta was not being available for schools because if there is no 18D the entire team is non-deployable. I had to wait until I was working for other 18Ds in the school house to go to Ranger School in the winter at age 35. Now I find out that school would have been easier if I had just waited until I was 53. :)

-The second worst part is working for those who either failed out of the Delta Course or were ineligible because their GT scores were too low. Actual quote from an SF CSM, "You medics, think you're so smart. I could have been a delta if it wasn't for that science stuff". Being a Delta means you will be ineligible for certain classifications based on subjective interpretation of the regulations. For example, I was Operation and Intelligence Qualified, performed the Intel Sgt. Job for over a year on my ODA and while assigned to a peace- keeping mission in Ecuador for MOMEP, but was not eligible for the 18F Identifier. Two members of my ODA submitted paperwork for that identifier the day before they graduated O&I and it became active the day they graduated. I was also not awarded a CIB despite the regulations stating otherwise and 18Ds not being recognized as medics under the Geneva Convention. I told the Army what they could do with their Combat Medical Badge. 18Ds were also not eligible for the EIB, despite 3/7SFG(A) needing the medics to train the other MOSs up because all but one of the EIB qualified personnel in our company were 18Ds with infantry backgrounds. The rationale was that we were eligible for the Expert Field Medical Badge. SFC Lenny Taylor got us out of that BS detail by promising to fail every SF EIB candidate if medics were not allowed to try out also. The CSM told Lenny, "You cant' do that, that's cheating". Taylor answered back, "How will you know, you don't have one".

Not all bad fellows. Great train up for a future as a doctor, nurse practitioner, PA or RN where you can make some money downs the road after your body doesn't allow you to be all Hooah anymore. :)