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rainboq · 2 years

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you said "I could go on an entire rant about how David was probably not combat arms based on how he can't clear a fucking room" and I'm definitely interested in that rant. is this because of how he gets ambushed when entering the Dark Room and even if warned a guy with a fucking tripod can take him down even tho he has a gun? is there more where we see that?

Disclaimer: I am not, nor have I ever been, a member of any armed forces. This is all information I've gleaned after talking with and learning from members of various armed services and asking them direct questions.

Okay, so, let's start with defining some terms. POG/Pogue: Personnel Other than Grunt, a pejorative for someone who isn't combat infantry. Synonyms: Fobbit, REMF (Rear-Echelon MotherFucker)

BCT: Brigade Combat team, an organizational unit of multiple regiments and supporting arms to form a coherent combat unit at a brigade level.

MOS code: Military Occupational Specialty code, the code for your job in the army. The general infantry code is 11X, with 11B being your standard infantryman, 11C being an indirect fire infantryman, etc.

MOUT: Military Operations in Urban Terrain, the doctrine on how to conduct combat operations in urban terrain.

CQB: Close Quarters Battle, the nitty gritty of how you conduct combat in urban and close quarters environments.

With those out of the way, let's talk about what we know about David.

1: He was a member of the 3rd Infantry Division, see the famous "broken TV" patch on his arm:

2: He has mechanical skills, given his hobby of working on old cars.

3: For some reason, he has a USMC KBAR with an engraving on it.

4: By his own admission, David was "not good at teamwork".

5: David does not properly secure his firearms. They are in a china cabinet, and prior to Chloe stealing the revolver, it was not locked.

6: His buddy died while overseas in an unspecified incident, but David blames himself. A HUMVEE is prominent in the background.

7: David has a deep seated need to be seen and acknowledged as a big damned hero, which leads to him being a total fuckup in multiple instances and contributes to his abuse of Chloe.

So off the hop, David was part of an Infantry Division, but before you jump into saying "Oh, so he must have been infantry!", a division is a lot more than just what it says on the tin. The 3rd Infantry, like all other divisions, is currently split up into multiple BCTs, which contain armoured, infantry, artillery, and cavalry regiments, along with engineering and support battalions. During Operation Iraqi Freedom (when David likely served), it was organized into two full brigades and one BCT comprised of mechanized infantry and armoured regiments. The division itself also has sustainment and aviation brigades for logistics and further fire support. So the 3rd Infantry tidbit isn't super helpful about what his MOS was.

Which brings me to David's mechanical skills. If you hadn't noticed, the kinds of regiments I listed involve a lot of vehicles. You've got tanks, IFVs, APCs, trucks, humvees, and helicopters that all need crew and maintenance. Mechanical skills are highly valuable to the smooth operation and mobility of a modern mechanized fighting force, and David has these skills. I could probably stop here and say that he was more valuable to the army as a mechanic in a motor pool than as a rifleman and call him a POG, but that's not what bugs me about him.

The K-Bar is weird, but it's entirely possible that he was given it by a marine, or Joyce is just clueless and got it for him as a gift. If it's the later, well, he's not going to be showing it to anyone. If it was given to him by a marine, he probably saved that marine's life. But that presents a character dilemma: if David saved the life of a marine, he'd never shut up about it. David's need to be seen as a hero would demand that he bring it up at every available opportunity, and he never does, which leads me to conclude that Joyce got it for him.

Now we get to the teamwork thing. Now this really bugs me. Infantry work is teamwork. You rely on everyone around you to do their job to stay alive. You rely on your battle buddy to watch out for you, you rely on your fireteam to coordinate and get the task done, you rely on your squad for support to function as a unit, etc. If any one person isn't doing their job, people can start dying, and they can start dying quickly. You weren't watching your sector? Your buddy gets shot in the side or the back. You fall asleep during your watch? Congrats, your camp has been infiltrated and your throat gets slit. Not being able to work as part of a team would make David a liability to himself and everyone around him, which is why training focuses so much on it. If David was at any point on track to become infantry, his inability to do it would get him onto a different career path in a hurry, and if he did somehow make it, nobody is going to trust him with a god damn thing. Ditto goes for being part of the crew of an armoured vehicle, that's teamwork in tight quarters. And artillery? If artillery fucks up, some mighty big rounds are going to be landing in the wrong spot, and god help the unit that calls for artillery support and gets rounds wildly off target.

Okay, so David is a giant liability because he's kind of a jackass and doesn't play well with others, if that's not enough to disqualify him as being infantry, there's more circumstantial evidence in the matter of not securing his weapons. If there's one thing that is beaten into the skull of everyone who holds a rifle, it is how to maintain, use, and secure a weapon. If you so much as point a rifle in a funny direction on the range, the rangemaster is going to be on your ass in a heartbeat, and god help you if you somehow lose your service weapon. I can't think of a single person I know who was in combat arms who does not securely store any firearms they own, and they're pretty much universally the most responsible people with guns I know. David handling his firearms like he does would give most of them an aneurysm.

So we've established that David was in the 3rd Infantry Division, has mechanics skills, is wildly irresponsible as a gun owner, and can't do one of the fundamental basics required of anyone in the infantry. Now we get to the matter of his buddy. We aren't given any details of it, only that David feels responsible. This could mean basically anything, but it's worth noting that even people in the motor pool occasionally have to go outside the wire if say, they need someone to pull convoy duty and they're short handed for whatever reason. Which leaves a likely scenario given my earlier supposition that David would be valuable in the motor pool: He and his buddy got pulled for convoy duty. Depending on when and where, this could mean that they were stuck in a HUMVEE (which is likely given that one is in the background) and went outside the wire as part of a convoy.

Now put yourself in David's shoes. You've been itching for a chance to be a hero, you've been bored out of your fucking mind all tour just fixing trucks and itching to "see some action", and now you're outside the wire, in potentially hostile territory. You're jumpy, you're excited, and... nothing happens. Every bump and rock on the side of the road could be an IED, every truck or car a VBED, every person on the side of the road could be telling someone about your convoy. It's exhausting, it wears on you, your focus quickly gets sapped, the adrenaline wears off and you start getting tired. Your vigilance wanes and your attention slips.

And that's when it happens. Maybe it's an IED, maybe it's someone with an RPG hiding behind something, maybe it's a sniper, maybe it's blue on blue, but something happens and you panic. You've got minimal training for actual combat, just what you had in basic before going off to train in your MOS. You panic, you make mistakes, maybe you cause a blue on blue, maybe you can't keep your rounds on target, maybe it's already too late and your buddy is already dead.

So now David has PTSD and a reason to be hyper-vigilant and paranoid so he can try and atone for past mistakes. He made that mistake once and it cost him someone he held dear, and now he has a step daughter that doesn't listen to him, hates his guts for existing, and is almost never home. Is it any wonder he starts trying to control Chloe right off the bat, and that his need for control quickly turns into abuse? David knows he has these issues, he acknowledges them in LiS, but he's also not seeking meaningful help yet.

But that's not the topic of this post, this isn't David apologia, and it's not out to condemn him for his abuse, that's beating a dead horse.

No, this is about what happened in the dark room.

MOUT and CQB training are a standard part of training to be in the infantry. They are part and parcel of 11X. Infantry isn't much use if it can't take a city or storm a building. What David was doing in the dark room should be something any infantryman has trained to do extensively. It's a room with a very conventional L shaped layout, with a single blind corner after clearing the fatal funnel (the door). Clearing it should have been easy if he had known the basic tactic of slicing the pie.

What's slicing the pie you might ask?

It's how you clear your corners.

The idea is simple enough, you slowly round a corner, clearing it one degree of angle at a time, giving yourself a few feet of space so that if someone is tucked in at an extreme angle, you have spacing to defend yourself.

Example diagrams:

(image source)

Once again: this is basic shit you can trust airsofters to do. Everyone in the infantry should know this and be expected to execute it.

David?

lol no.

Go back and watch the scene. He has insufficient clearance from the corner, he isn't slicing the pie, he isn't moving like he's supposed to.

Instead he's doing the fucking Hollywood thing of rounding the corner all at once, exposing himself to multiple positions he could take fire from or see a target at simultaneously. In an actual battle, this is fucking suicide, and without Max to save scum for him, he dies quickly to an art teacher.

That is why I think he was a POG. He can't clear a goddamned room to save his life and nearly gets Max killed as a result.

Now, none of this is me actually saying that people who are mechanics, pilots, etc in the armed forces are less valuable than the grunts, that's not true. Without the support staff, combat arms cannot function. They can't get food, ammo, intelligence, working vehicles, etc.

In David's mind though? I'd put money on him wanting to be in combat arms and being pointed elsewhere of who he is, and basically permanently having a bug up his ass about it.

#Life is Strange #David Madsen #chloe price #David is a jackass and needed to be in therapy #Not being a stepdad to a traumatized teenager who just lost her dad #Joyce please #Pick a better man #And no I don't consider him redeemed for saving Max #He's the reason Chloe was in that bathroom to start with #And how Jefferson was able to commit his crimes #If Chloe Kate or Rachel had been able to trust him with their problems none of this would have happened #But David is the opposite of trustworthy #He's paranoid and jumps to conclusions like a motherfucker

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